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Wieman, Henry Nelson, 1884- 
Religious experience and 
scientific method 


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RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE AND 
SCIENTIFIC METHOD 


THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
NEW YORK - BOSTON + CHICAGO + DALLAS 
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MACMILLAN & CO., LmitEeD 
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RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 
AND SCIENTIFIGs#7: 
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METHOD ( | Fee 27 1926 


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By/ 
Henry NELSON ‘WIEMAN, Pu.D. 
Professor of Philosophy, Occidental College. 


New Uork 
‘THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 


1926 
All Rights Reserved 


Copyright, 1926, 
By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY. 


Set up and electrotyped. 
Published February, 1926. 


Printed in the United States of America by 
THE FERRIS PRINTING COMPANY, NEW YORK. 


TO A. M. W. 


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PREFACE 


The general reader who wants to see the practi- 
cal results of our position and to avoid the more 
difficult philosophical discussions should read par- 
ticularly chapters II, IV, VIII, and IX. These 
have more of what is called ‘human interest.”’ 
Chapters III, VII, X, XI are a little more rigorous. 
The student and expert, on the other hand, who 
desire to get the constructive body of the work and 
test its intellectual accuracy should read particularly 
chapters I, III, V, VI and XIII. 

The chief purpose of this book is to show that 
religious experience is experience of an object, how- 
ever undefined, which is as truly external to the in- 
dividual as is any tree or stone he may experience. 
It signifies something which extends beyond that 
space-time occupied by the individual undergoing 
the experience. 

I am very sure that religion must plant itself 
firmly on the data of sense else it will become the 
plaything of the sentimentalist and nothing more. 
If the object of religious devotion is more pecu- 
liarly “‘within”’ than are the objects of scientific in- 
vestigation, if it is any more a creature of the hu- 
man mind than are they, then it will be treated very 
tenderly, as Santa Claus is treated, being an illusion 
cherished by children, by the weak spirited and 


5 


6 PREFACE 


other such who are unable to deal with things as 
they are. But the strong and intellectually alert 
will have nothing to do with it. Religion will 
continue to lose, as it has already lost, intellectual 
standing. And just as far as it loses intellectual 
standing it will be given over to sentimental gush 
and serve its chief purpose in providing a means 
for self deception to those who want to play the 
ostrich. 

It would be presumptuous to call this work a 
philosophy of religion, but it is a first step in that 
direction. There is a reciprocal relation between 
science and religion which I try to trace in parts 
one and two, intending to show that neither can 
maintain itself in adequate manner without the 
ot er. In part three I endeavor to clear away from 
the face of religion what I believe to be certain pres- 
ent-day misinterpretations of it and to state my 
own view of its function in human living. 

Among teachers to whom I owe much, first men- 
tion must be made of Professor Wm. Ernest Hock- 
ing. How far I may have departed from his 
teaching I do not know, but I do know that I have 
taken heavily from him. For introduction to the 
spirit of scientific method, and enthusiastic appre- 
ciation of it, I owe most to Professor Ralph Bar- 
ton Perry. The influence of the writings of Pro- 
fessor John Dewey will be apparent throughout 
the following pages. For most recent encourage- 
ment in bringing the present work to publication 
I want to thank Dean Shailer Mathews, Professor 
John A. MacIntosh and Reverend Hugh Kerr. Of 


PREFACE 7 


course none of the persons mentioned can be held 
responsible for the views here presented. 

While for the most part the material here pub- 
lished is new, portions of it have appeared in the 
Journal of Religion, the Journal of Philosophy 
and the International Journal of Ethics. Ac- 
knowledgment is here made to the editors of these 
journals for the use of this material. 

In chapter VIII I have made quite extensive quo- 
tations from the World Tomorrow and the Atlan- 
tic Monthly. I want to thank these journals 
for the permission they have given to borrow from 
them; and especially to thank Mr. Paul Green for 
the use of his story ‘“The Devil’s Instrument’ pub- 
lished in the Atlantic. Chapter XII appeared in 
the Journal of Religion, Vol. 5, Sept., 1925, under 
the heading ‘‘Religion in Dewey’s Experience and 


Nature.” 
H. N. W. 


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INTRODUCTION 


Whatever else the word God may mean, it is a 
term used to designate that Something upon which 
human life is most dependent for its security, wel- 
fare and increasing abundance. That there is such 
a Something cannot be doubted. The mere fact 
that human life happens, and continues to happen, 
proves that this Something, however unknown, 
does certainly exist. 

Of course one can say that there are innumer- 
able conditions which converge to sustain human 
life, and that is doubtless the fact. But in that case 
either one of two things is true. Either the uni- 
verse is a single individual organic unity, in which 
case it is the whole indivisible universe that has 
brought forth and now sustains human life; or else 
certain of these sustaining conditions are more criti- 
cally, ultimately and constantly important for 
human welfare than are others. According to the 
first view God would be, or involve, the whole 
universe; according to the second he would be those 
most important conditions which, taken collec- 
tively, constitute the Something which must have 
supreme value for all human living. The word 
God, taken with its very minimum meaning, is the 
name for this Something of supreme value. God 
may be much more than this, but he is certainly 
this by definition. In this sense, with this minimum 


9 


10 INTRODUCTION 


meaning, God cannot be denied. His existence is 
absolutely certain. He is simply that which is 
supremely significant in all the universe for human 
living, however known or unknown he may be. 

Of course this statement concerning God proves 
nothing about his character, except that he is the 
most beneficent object in the universe for human 
beings. He is certainly the object of supreme value. 
Nothing is implied by this definition concerning 
personality in God; but neither is personality de- 
nied. In fact, personality is by no means a clear 
and simple term. But two things are made certain: 
his existence and the supremacy of his value over all 
others, if we measure value in terms of human need. 

But such abstract reasoning concerning God ac- 
complishes little save to clear the ground, remove 
misunderstanding and prejudice and open the way 
for the more vital problem. 

We believe nothing is more important at the 
present stage of human thought than to define God 
in terms of concrete experience. Failure to do this 
has led some of the finest scientific thinkers of our 
time to regard religion as superstition and nothing 
else. E. Rignano is typical of such thinkers and 
such an attitude. After tracing the many attempts 
that have been made to define and demonstrate 
God and the immortality of the soul by means of 
“metaphysical reasoning,’’ and finding all these 
attempts futile, being nothing but “‘defense reac- 
tions’’ by which men try to make themselves think 
the world to be as they would like to have it, and 
concealing the nonsense in all their intellectual con- 


INTRODUCTION 11 


structions by means of the vagueness and obscurity 
of their thought, he goes on to say: 


These mystical minds—which will always exist 
—will always continue to try to realize and sys- 
tematize their aspirations and their dreams in 
transcendent constructions, ever new, ever differ- 
ent, ever vain; pale reflections of the great systems 
of the past, the last gleams of a great human illu- 
sion that has vanished. And these metaphysical 
speculations, old and new, will in their entirety 
constitute a great epic handing down to posterity 
the exploits of the tragic revolt, worthy of Pro- 
metheus, which the infinitely small microcosm has 
dared and will dare again to attempt against the 
infinitely great macrocosm.? 


He contrasts with this ‘‘metaphysical,’’ theo- 
logical and ‘“‘mystical’’ reasoning the intellectual 
work of the positivist and scientist who goes to 
experience for the truth and whose thinking con- 
sists altogether of experimentation; who discovers 
the truth partly by actually carrying out experi- 
ments on nature by physical manipulation, but 
even more by combining in imagination innumer- 
able physical experiments that can only be com- 
bined in such great numbers by imagination and 
thus be made to reveal new facts otherwise never 
to be discovered. This classification, multiplica- 
tion, and unique combination of experimental oper- 
ations in thought by means of concepts is the great- 
est achievement of the intellect, the only means by 
which truth can be brought to light, and the only 


1The Psychology of Reasoning, p. 261. 


12 INTRODUCTION 


way in which human aspirations can be rendered 
effective in this world or wrought into the body of 
existence. 

In all these claims which Rignano makes for 
scientific thought, we believe he is correct. When 
he points out the error of those who turn away 
from experience to find God by metaphysical spec- 
ulation, we believe he is rendering religion a serv- 
ice. Metaphysics in the sense of that reasoning 
which adjures experience and the conclusions of 
scientific thought, is futile, as Rignano says. 

Furthermore, we agree with him in his condem- 
nation of mysticism, if mysticism is used in the 
sense in which he uses it. Perhaps his use of the 
word is the only legitimate use; but we believe our 
usage is justified. However, if it is not, our thought 
must be tested by its actual content and not by the 
fact that we have given an unconventional meaning 
to the word. 

To clarify our usage of mysticism and distin- 
guish it from other meanings attached to it, let us 
consider how Rignano applies the word. He uses 
it in two slightly different senses. 

In the first place he means by mysticism the rev- 
erence or emotional glow which may attach itself 
to certain words or phrases when these have lost 
all intellectual significance. When a word or other 
symbol has ceased to signify any fact of experience 
whatsoever, and precisely because it does not sig- 
nify anything which will contradict or render 
foolish and unwarranted the enthusiasm which 
attaches to it, as a mere word without intelligible 


INTRODUCTION 13 


meaning, it stirs the mystic to emotional raptures. 
In other words, by mysticism Rignano means sen- 
timentality. “Certain terms thus become in time 
pure sounds, no longer evoking intellectual rep- 
resentations, but only emotions; and not certain 
particular emotions relating to a well-determined 
object, but ‘general emotions,’ similar to those 
aroused by a ‘series of musical notes in the minor 
mode,’ ’”? 

Now there is no question but that this kind of 
“mysticism’’ does occur. There are people who 
maintain such an attitude toward certain intellec- 
tually meaningless symbols, and the value of the 
symbol can be preserved for them only by keeping 
it intellectually meaningless. If one wishes to call 
this mysticism, of course he can. It is a legitimate 
use of the word. But it is not the sense in which 
we shall use the word. 

There is a second sense in which Rignano uses 
mysticism, closely allied to the first. It is the belief 
that back of the world of sense there is some ‘‘nou- 
menal reality’’ inaccessible to experience, but never- 
theless existent. “‘....any act of mysticism does 
just consist in admitting the existence of something 
mysterious which is not capable either of coming 
under the observation of any of our senses or of 
being imagined by means of sensible elements com- 
bined together in any fashion.’’ 

It is interesting to note that he accuses mathema- 
ticians, many and prominent, of being mystic in 


this sense. Such mysticism rises among mathema- 


2 loc. cit. p. 256, 
8 loc, cit. p. 185. 


14 INTRODUCTION 


ticians when they begin to use mathematical sym- 
bols which refer to such infinities of complex 
operations that they lose the connection between 
these symbols and the empirical operations signi- 
fied. Consequently, when they operate with the 
symbols to produce results which are mathemati- 
cally correct and yet seem to have no existence in 
the world of experience because they have lost the 
reference these symbols have to empirical opera- 
tions, they think they are dealing with some tran- 
scendental reality. To demonstrate the error of this 
view Rignano very acutely traces the higher 
branches of mathematics showing how they refer, 
directly or indirectly, but always ultimately, to 
the world of experience.* 

Here again we have a kind of “‘mysticism’’ that 
does certainly occur. There are many people who 
feel that they are leaping into a transcendental 
sphere beyond the reach of all experience when 
they operate with symbols which, so far as they can 
see, do not refer to anything in experience. We 
agree with Rignano in claiming that when we deal 
with such symbols either one of two things is true. 
Either the symbols do refer to facts of experience 
which we fail to discern, or else they refer to noth- 
ing at all and hence are meaningless. In neither 
case do they introduce us to the transcendental. Of 
course a symbol may refer to experience in a very 
indirect fashion, by referring to other symbols and 
these to others and so on. But if the ultimate object 


4 Our own Cassius Keyser would doubtless come under the head of such 
mystics. See his Human Worth of Rigorous Thinking. Also Spaulding 
with his New Rationalism. 


INTRODUCTION 15 


of reference be not some phase of experience, then 
this mutual reference of symbols to one another 
merely serves (if it serves any good at all) to de- 
fine and distinguish the symbols from one another, 
so that they can be used more effectively in desig- 
nating some object of experience. But the only ob- 
jects we can know are the objects of experience. 

We trust that our use of the word mysticism 
will not be confused with either of these meanings 
which have so frequently been attached to it. By 
mysticism we mean a certain way of experiencing 
the world of empirical fact, and nothing more. It 
is the sort of experience described by William James, 
for instance, in his essay on ‘‘A Certain Blindness 
in Human Beings,’’ quotations from which will be 
found in chapter III following. 

There are times when men, with a partial sus- 
pension of thought processes, become aquiver with 
the vast fullness of sensuous experience that rains 
down upon them. This is the mystic state. It may 
be brought on by symbols and in many other dif- 
ferent ways. But it is not a thinking state: it is 
merely a form of immediate experience. It cannot 
yield knowledge until it is correctly interpreted. 
Its true meaning must be brought to light by in- 
tellectual operations which are not mystical. In the 
mystic state one does not think, he does not cog- 
nize, he is simply immediately aware—of what? 
Of the fullness of some concrete experience. Since 
mysticism is not a thinking state, the definition 
and description of the religious object, God, can- 
not be the work of mysticism, although mysticism 


16 INTRODUCTION 


may supply the datum through which intellect may 
discover God. 
NOTE: The reader who wishes to omit the more theorctical portions and 


read only the parts of general interest should pass over chapter I and read 
chapters II, IV, VIII and IX. 


INTRODUCTION 


CHAPTER 


i. 
II. 
III. 
IV. 


THE NATURE AND FUNCTION OF RELIGION 


CONTENTS 


se oe Tel woe See Sere ie. eos 6 Oe, 8 a) 'e) 2 8 el ee. © 


PART I 
WHY RELIGION NEEDS SCIENCE 


SCIENCE AND OUR KNOWLEDGE OF GOD..... 
SCIENCE THE CORRECTIVE OF RELIGION.....- 
THOUGHT AND WORSHIP 
CHRISTIANITY AND LOVE 


of aie w O10) ei eye) ay 61 Bie cel oi ne 


PART II 
WHY SCIENCE NEEDS RELIGION 


THE TWO SIDES OF LIFE 
SCIENTIFIC METHOD 
AWARENESS AND SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERY..... 
REBIRTH AND AUTO-SUGGESTION 
CHRISTIANITY AND SCIENTIFIC MORALITY ... 


Rg a ay OS lst [oh Ow. Be “Oye ee), 


le 6 & ee @. 8,5) Beh) Cee) 6 


PART II 


RELIGION AND IDEALS 

CHRISTIANITY AND PSYCHOLOGY 

RELIGION AND REFLECTIVE THINKING 

THE EMERGENCE OF RELIGION 
17 


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Religious Experience and 


Scientific Method 


CHAPTER I 
SCIENCE AND OUR KNOWLEDGE OF GOD 


Two views have been held concerning the way 
we know God. One has asserted that we must 
know God just as we know any other object; that 
there are no other powers or faculties of knowledge 
except those by which we know ordinary objects; 
and that we must know God as we know trees and 
houses and men or else not know Him at all. The 
other view has tried to show that knowledge of 
God is a special kind of knowledge; that there is 
a certain feeling, inner sense, eye of the soul, in- 
stinct, or intuition, faith, spiritual organ, moral 
will, or what not, which has God as its special 
object; that trees, houses and men may be known 
through interpretation of the data of sense that 
God is discerned in this special and peculiar manner. 
~ Now there are two senses in which one may refer 
to feeling, intuition, faith, moral will, etc., as means 
to knowing God. By these terms one may mean 
merely to designate certain distinctive kinds of ex- 
perience which provide the data that may lead to 
the knowledge of God if correctly interpreted. If 


21 


22 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 


that is all that is meant, then the assertion amounts 
to the first of the two above mentioned views. If 
that is what is meant, we know God as we know 
any other object, for that is the manner of all 
knowledge. But if faith, feeling, intuition, and 
moral will are represented as giving us an immedi- 
ate kind of knowledge in which there is no need 
for the analysis and interpretation of immediate 
experience by means of concepts, then the assertion 
amounts to the second of the two above mentioned 
views. Then the claim is that a certain kind of 
immediate experience gives us knowledge without 
the intervention of any further intellectual proc- 
esses. | 

This second view we hold to be false. We be- 
lieve it erroneous, in the first place, because it 
identifies knowledge with immediate experience. 
Immediate experience never yields knowledge, 
although it is one indispensable ingredient in 
knowledge inasmuch as it provides the data from 
which knowledge may be derived. We hold this 
view wrong, furthermore, because it resorts to a 
peculiar and mysterious faculty, as though every 
special kind of object must have a special kind of 
faculty for discerning it. “These mysterious facul- 
ties of discernment have long since been regarded 
as mythical by psychology and epistemology so far 
as all ordinary cognition is concerned. To cling 
still to such a view with respect to discernment of 
God is to put the knowledge of God outside the 
field of scientific knowledge, where it can be neither 
examined or tested. Such a position is fatal to 


AND SCIENTIFIC METHOD fie, 


religion. It means that knowledge of God will be 
calmly ignored by all those who are interested in 
scientific thought. As a matter of fact, we believe 
it is precisely because this view has prevailed that 
knowledge of God has been so widely ignored in 
scientific circles. And by scientific circles we mean 
scientifically inclined philosophers, and all who are 
dominated by the scientific method, whether they 
be professional scientists or not. 

All knowledge must depend ultimately upon 
science, for science is nothing else than the refined 
process of knowing. Scientific method is simply 
the method of knowing. We call it scientific only 
because it has been deliberately developed for the 
purpose of guarding against error. All knowledge 
is scientific except in so far as it has not developed 
a method for discriminating accurately between the 
false and the true. Ordinary knowledge is dis- 
tinguished from the scientific only because of its © 
vagueness and its undetected fancies and illusions. 
The knowledge of God must be ultimately sub- 
jected to scientific method. We say ultimately 
rather than immediately because, as we shall see 
later, science has not yet developed a method ade- 
quate to deal with the more complex data of ex- 
perience. Physics became a science long before 
psychology because its data were so much more 
simple. Sociology has scarcely yet attained the 
status of a science because its data are so complex. 
The datum of religious experience is so exceedingly 
complex that no method has yet been devised which 
is fit to treat it scientifically. But we are working 


24 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 


in that direction. In the meantime men can have 
acquaintance with God without accurate knowl- 
edge of Him, just as men could have acquaintance 
with matter long before there was any science of 
physics to give them scientific knowledge of it; just 
as men had acquaintance with food long before 
there was any scientific knowledge of the nature of 
food. Our knowledge of matter and life and mind 
is more or less scientific. Our knowledge of society 
is becoming scientific. We do not yet have any 
knowledge of God that can be called scientific. 
But for centuries our knowledge of the object of 
religious experience has been growing more scien- 
tific. 

But before we can consider adequately the rela- 
tion between science and our knowledge of God we 
must get as clear an idea as possible of the nature 

of cognition. 
*  Jmmediate experience, we have said, does not 
necessarily yield knowledge at all; much less does 
it necessarily yield true knowledge. Our hand may 
brush a table in the dark and yet we do not know 
it. We may not interpret the experience at all. 
We may not know that our hand has touched any- 
thing, our mind being turned to other things. We 
have had a genuine experience of the table, an ex- 
perience, however, in which there is no cognition 
or knowledge. The same, of course, applies to vis- 
ual sense data or any other sensation or combina- 
tion of sensations. The image of the table may fall 
upon the retina of my eye and I be unaware of it 
or interpret it wrongly, thinking it to be a shadow. 


AND SCIENTIFIC METHOD 25 


While immediate experience is not identical with 
knowledge and does not necessarily yield knowl- 
edge, yet our knowledge of the concrete external 
world, including other minds, is derived from im- 
mediate experience. We know an object when we 
are able to designate certain sense qualities having a 
certain order in time and space. When we experi- 
ence one or more of these sense qualities in certain 
temporal and spatial relations to other sense quali- 
ties, we are able to infer that the object before us 
is of a certain sort, a table or chair or what not. 
We test this inference by exposing ourselves to fur- 
ther sense qualities. If these further sense qualities 
are of the sort that properly pertain to the inferred 
object occurring in that order in space and time 
which is proper to the object in question, we know 
that our inference was correct. Our knowledge is 
then fairly certain. All the elaborate tests of scien- 
tific investigation depend ultimately upon this cor- 
roboration of inference by means of sense data. Of 
course the situation may be so familiar that we infer 
instantly from a bit of given experience what the 
object is, and do so with a high degree of certainty. 

We want to make a distinction between knowl- 
edge by acquaintance and knowledge by descrip- 
tion, but not using these terms in exactly the same 
sense as William James, who coined the phrases. 
Knowledge by acquaintance, according to our usage, 
is of that which has been experienced by some one, 
or presumptively could be if the right kind of or- 
ganism could be placed in the right situation. 
Knowledge by description, on the other hand, is of 


26 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 


that which could not be experienced by any organ- 
ism or mind whatsoever, because it does not refer 
to any of the data of experience. Mathematical 
points and lines are such objects of knowledge. 
They do not belong to the realm of experience at 
all, although they may be related to experience by 
means of what Whitehead calls ‘‘extensive abstrac- 
tion.” All geometrical, mathematical and purely 
logical entities are outside the realm of experience. 
Our knowledge of them consists of concepts which 
refer to other concepts and not to any data of ex- 
perience. All number is of this sort, number being 
no object or group of objects which can be expe- 
rienced, but being a “‘class of classes,’’ according to 
Bertrand Russell. 

Now in both these two kinds of knowledge, 
that of acquaintance and that of description, 
knowledge requires a whole system of concepts. An 
isolated proposition does not yield knowledge any 
more than an isolated datum of experience. But 
the difference between the two is that in descrip- 
tion the single concept refers to a system of concepts 
and nothing more; while in knowledge by ac- 
quaintance the system of concepts which are thus 
brought into play serve to designate certain data 
of experience. In accurate scientific knowledge this 
system of concepts serves to define the order in 
space-time in which certain data of experience must 
occur in order to constitute a certain object. Scien- 
tific knowledge consists in designating this order 
of experience plus, generally, certain hypothetical 
entities which are required to fill out the fragmen- 


AND SCIENTIFIC METHOD 27 


tary experience. But in purely descriptive knowl- 
edge there are no such data of experience. In purely 
descriptive knowledge there are no hypothetical 
entities to fill out the ragged edges of experience, 
because no experience enters into the object of such 
knowledge. Such knowledge is simply the inter- 
locking of a perfectly consistent system of concepts 
without regard to any experience whatsoever. Any 
perfectly consistent set of propositions which have 
been built up without regard to any particular ex- 
perience, would be knowledge by description. Some 
would say that such consistency could not yield 
knowledge of anything save of the necessary logical 
requirements of thinking. 

Now this distinction between these two kinds of 
knowledge has a very direct bearing upon knowl- 
edge of God. It raises one of the most important 
questions that bear upon this matter. Is our knowl- 
edge of God knowledge by acquaintance, or is it 
purely descriptive? Is God an object that enters 
into our immediate awareness, or is He only an 
object of speculation, known only through the 
logical consistency of propositions, which must be 
the form of all accurate knowledge, but known 
through a logical consistency which does not de- 
fine any object entering our immediate awareness? 
Is he an object of possible experience, or is He 
purely a system of concepts? <A great deal of re- 
ligious thinking has interpreted God as a system 
of concepts, and that only. They have not neces- 
sarily denied that God was an object of possible 
immediate experience, although Kant did just that, 


28 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 


because he was clear-headed enough to see that 
that was the inevitable outcome of his position. 
But many, not so clear in thought as he, have some- 
times seemed to imply that a system of concepts 
could be experienced the same as a horse or a cow. 
But concepts cannot be experienced in the same way 
as fire or earth. Can God be so experienced? Either 
God is an object of sensuous experience, or else He 
is purely a system of concepts and nothing more. 
All attempts to escape this dilemma must result in 
confusion and befuddlement, if not in actual super- 
stition. 

We believe that advance toward scientific knowl- 
edge of God has been delayed by failure to recog- 
nize this sharp distinction and insist that God must 
be either the object of sensuous experience, or else 
a system of concepts and nothing more. In any 
case, God must be known through a system of con- 
cepts, for there is no other way of knowing. But if 
He be an object of acquaintance, the system of con- 
cepts refers to certain experiences, while if He be 
not, the concepts only refer to one another. If He 
be not an object of sense experience, He cannot be 
scientifically known. Knowledge of Him then be- 
comes purely a matter of logic, a matter of reduc- 
ing certain concepts to perfect consistency, but 
without any attempt to use them to designate any 
data or datum of experience. Logic has its part to 
play in all knowledge, of course; in knowledge by 
acquaintance as well as in knowledge by descrip- 
tion. But knowledge by acquaintance is logic plus, 
while knowledge by pure description is not. In 


AND SCIENTIFIC METHOD = 29 


knowledge by acquaintance logic merely assists by 
devising those concepts which can best serve to 
define the character and significance of the data of 
experience. In knowledge by pure description 
logic does everything. It is significant to note that 
Whitehead and Bertrand Russell have discovered 
that the ultimates of logic and mathematics are 
identical. 

God, we claim, is not a logico-mathematical 
entity. He is an object of immediate experience. 
Mystical experience of the sort we shall portray, 
akin to aesthetic and social experience, but clearly 
different from both, must be scientifically inter- 
preted if we are to know what God is. If by God 
we mean the object of such experience, without any 
further attempt to describe his character, then there 
can be not the slightest doubt in the world that 
God exists. For there can be no question about the 
reality of religious experience; and all experience 
is the experience of something. Religious experi- 
ence is just as real as any experience; just as real, 
for instance, as the experience of a human beloved, 
or color, or sound, or the experience given in dreams 
and hallucinations, or those experiences which are 
said to be of trees and stones. All experiences are 
of equal reality. The only question that can be 
raised anent them is concerning their precise char- 
acter and their significance. All experiences signify 
something. All experiences are experiences of some 
object or other. The only question is: What ob- 
ject? We often do not know the nature of the ob- 
ject we experience. In hallucinations we plainly 


30 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 


are mistaken concerning the object experienced. 
But that does not belie the fact of some object. It 
could not be an hallucination if there were no true 
object to give the lie to the hallucination. Abso- 
lute scepticism concerning existence of the objects 
of experience is impossible, even though one must 
invent an ‘animal faith’’ to escape from it.’ 

Why are people so uncertain concerning their 
concept of God if He be an object of experience 
as genuinely as tree and hill and stone? One reason 
we have already indicated. The datum of experi- 
ence is so complex that no scientific method has yet 
been devised which is able to deal with it. But a 
more immediate reason, a corollary to this, is that 
religious experience has not been adequately dis- 
tinguished from many other forms and phases of 
experience. In our experience of God there is a 
merging of many experiences, and just that form 
which gives us the datum signifying God is not 
clearly distinguished from that which gives us our 
knowledge of earth and sky, and fellow man and 
social group. Now of course this merging of many 
phases of experience is inevitable, not only in the 
case of God, but in the case of everything else. 
When we have a visual experience of a stone we 
also, in the same situation, experience the light and 
hence the sun, also the earth and sky, and heaven 
knows what all. All these are merged in our ex- 
perience of the stone. But in the case of the stone 
we have learned how to distinguish between that 
phase of experience which can be said to be data 


4 See Santayana, Scepticism and Animal Faith. 


AND SCIENTIFIC METHOD 31 


pertaining to stone, and that phase which is data 
pertaining to sun, etc. There is probably an infinite 
wealth of data merged in any ordinary experience, 
but we have learned to distinguish and select from 
this infinite wealth those data which enable us 
to adapt ourselves to stones and trees and hills and 
make inference concerning them. But with respect 
to our experience of God we have not learned to 
do this with so much clarity. 

Religious experience is one of the most ancient 
and widespread of all experiences, but the distinc- 
tive merging of data constituting the total datum of 
religious experience has never been satisfactorily de- 
fined. The same is true of that datum of experi- 
ence from which we derive our knowledge of other 
minds. Perhaps religious experience and experience 
of other minds belong to the same category. Because 
the data pertaining to God and other minds is so 
much more complex than that pertaining to stones 
and trees, it is very natural that we should be much 
slower in clarifying the former than the latter. 
Hence sociology, and above all, scientific theology, 
will be among the latest of all sciences when they 
finally arrive. But until they do arrive, our social 
intercourse with God and other minds will be full 
of delusions, blunders, vague fancies, and blind- 
ness to fact. Until these objects of our immediate 
experience become more intelligible, our society and 
our religion will be full of error and confusion, as 
they certainly are to-day. Since science has clarified 
the data out of which we develop our knowledge 
of physical nature, our knowledge in this field of 


32 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 


experience has proceeded by leaps and bounds, and 
our adjustments to the processes of nature is one 
of the marvels of the age. But in pitiful contrast 
stands our knowledge of those objects which are 
experienced in human society and mystic worship 
—fellowman and God. How confused and how 
full of illusions and blunderings are our social and 
religious adjustments as compared to our physical, 
chemical and biological. The difference is that 
science has entered the field of physics, chemistry 
and biology. It has only begun to enter the field of 
society; and the field of religion it only approaches 
from afar off. 

Some might claim that it is as absurd to speak 
of science entering the field of religion as to speak 
of it entering the field of alchemy or astrology. But 
that is precisely the point. Science did enter the field 
of alchemy and astrology and there resulted the 
sciences of chemistry and astronomy. There was a 
time, no doubt, when mathematicians ridiculed the 
notion that the blundering efforts of the alchemists 
could ever develop into a science. But they did. 

There can be no question about the fact of re- 
ligious experience, as we have already indicated. It 
is just as much a fact as any other kind of experi- 
ence—as eating or dreaming or loving, for instance. 
The only questions are: What sort of object is ex- 
perienced? And second: What is the significance 
for human living in such experience? These ques- 
tions can be answered satisfactorily only by science, 
if by science we understand merely that method by 
which truth and error are discriminated and knowl- 


AND SCIENTIFIC METHOD 33 


edge verified. Since that is the sense in which we 
are using the word science, it becomes a truism to 
say that these questions can be answered by science. 

In moving toward a more adequate, i.e. a more 
scientific, knowledge of God, even though we ap- 
proach from afar off, three things are required: 
(1) a clarification of that type of experience which 
can be called distinctively religious; (2) an analy- 
sis or elucidation of that datum in this experience 
which signifies the object being experienced (God) ; 
and (3) inference concerning the nature of this 
object. 

It is true there are scientists, and others, who 
ridicule any attempt to reach verifiable knowledge 
concerning the existence and nature of God. That 
seems to be the attitude, for instance, of C. D. Broad 
in his contrast between “‘critical’’ and ‘‘speculative’’ 
philosophy.? But we must remember that this is 
a very old old story. Every new science has been 
ridiculed by those whose bent of thought has been 
shaped by some older and better established science. 
Chemists were once ridiculed when they claimed to 
be able to reach any knowledge of facts by other 
data than those recognized by physics. Biologists 
even yesterday, and perhaps in a few quarters even 
today, were ridiculed when they claimed to deal 
with any other data than those which physics and 
chemistry can treat. Psychologists are ridiculed 
when they claim to deal with any data other than 
the biological, physical and chemical. While all the 
sciences, forgetting the precarious days of their own 


2 Broad, C. D., Scientific Thought, chap. I. 


a4 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 


origin, turn with scorn upon sociology. With these 
facts in mind it ought not to disturb us when the 
quest of God as an object of knowledge is held up 
to contempt. 

We have said that the first step in moving toward 
an adequate or scientific knowledge of God is to 
define the character of distinctively religious experi- 
ence. We shall do this more fully in later chapters. 
But all such definitions must be more or less tenta- 
tive, for the science which has God as its object has 
not yet arrived. But much work has been done and 
is being done in this field. William James in his 
Varieties of Religious Experience, has taken us a 
long stride in the direction of distinguishing religi- 
ous experience from other forms of experience. 
William Ernest Hocking has carried us on farther 
still in this direction with his Meaning of God in 
Human Experience. Many others might be men- 
tioned. If many individuals contribute to the work 
of distinguishing, recording and interpreting re- 
ligious experience, and if the great religious experi- 
ences of history are preserved with some degree of 
accuracy, it may be that human history will cul- 
minate in an adequate idea of God. We can imagine 
no loftier culmination to the life of the race. 

The most common human appeal to God is in 
the hour of bewilderment, when the individual 
(and often the group) feels baffled and defeated. It 
is when he is not sure of himself that he turns to 
God; when he is in doubt and yet feels the urgency 
of action; when he does not know which way to 
turn and yet feels that he must turn some way. 


AND SCIENTIFIC METHOD We, 


Above all it is when one has staked all his life’s suc- 
cess and happiness upon some enterprise and feels 
it threatened with disaster or actually ruined. It is 
at such a time that one has a sense of God. Here, 
for instance, is an example recorded by Rufus Jones. 


I had a friend who went alone one day to con- 
sult a famous London doctor. My friend was 
very highly gifted and was at the time just be- 
ginning to reveal unusual literary powers and he 
was at the opening stage of a promising career in 
business. At the same time he was coming to be 
recognized as the spiritual leader of the younger 
section of his religious fellowship. Everything 
which makes life rich and great was before him, 
The doctor gravely and with almost killing frank- 
ness told him that he was the victim of a subtle 
and baffling disease which would destroy his hear- 
ing and his sight and would eventually seriously 
affect his memory. He came down the stairs of 
the doctor’s office and stood almost stunned on 
the curb of the street, realizing that all the large 
plans for his life had collapsed like a child’s house 
of blocks. Suddenly as he stood there, waiting to 
decide which way to go, he felt as though he was 
enveloped by the invading love of God and filled 
with a sense of unutterable peace. “There emerged 
within him a source of energy sufficient to turn 
his primary tendency to despair into steady con- 
sciousness of hope and joy which lasted through- 
out his life and gave him extraordinary power and 


influence.® 
3 Jones, Rufus M., Fundamental Ends of Life, p. 106. 


36 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 


The Freudians, of course, would say that this 
was the sudden emergence from the subconscious, 
of a phantasy; it was a ‘‘flight from reality”’ carried 
out by the mechanisms of the subconscious. This 
Freudian view and the general standpoint of Freu- 
dian psychology we shall treat in Part III. But, 
for the present, let us take another instance, not so 
readily subject to this widespread Freudian theory. 
Geo. A. Coe has given us the following: 


The Titanic survivors who were rescued by the 
Carpathia, so Stanton Coit, an eyewitness, relates, 
seemed not to be stunned and crushed but “‘lifted 
into an atmosphere of vision where self-centered 
suffering merges into some mystic meaning. .. . 
We were all one, not only with one another but 
with the cosmic being that for the time had 
seemed so cruel.’’ Still more significant is Pro- 
fessor James’ analysis of his own attitudes and 
those of others on the occasion of the great Cali- 
fornia earthquake, which overtook him at Stan- 
ford University. ‘‘As soon as I could think,’ he 
says, ‘‘I discerned retrospectively certain peculiar 
ways in which my consciousness had taken in the 
phenomenon. These ways were quite spontan- 
eous and, so to speak, inevitable and irresistible. 
First, I personified the earthquake as a permanent 
individual entity . . . . Animus and intent were 
never more present in any human action, nor did 
any human activity ever more definitely point back 
to a living agent as its source and origin. All 
whom I consulted on the point agreed as to this 
feature in their experience. ‘It expressed inten- 
tion,’ ‘It was vicious,’ ‘It was bent on destruc- 


AND SCIENTIFIC METHOD a 


tion,’ ‘It wanted to show its power,’ or what 
not. To me it simply wanted to manifest the 
full meaning of its name. But what was this 
‘It’? To some apparently, a vague, demoniac 
power; to me an individualized thing.’’* 


What precisely is it, in psychological behavior- 
istic terms, that occurs at such a time? In bewilder- 
ment the established system of habits are frustrated. 
There is a quickening of a great many different im- 
pulses, new and old, a flinging out aimlessly of in- 
numerable unorganized responses which, for the 
most part, do not reach the stage of overt action. 
We must imagine a case of extreme bewilderment, 
not merely where one considers a few rather well 
defined alternatives. An illustration would be a 
business crash where one’s business career is appar- 
ently ruined, or disappointment in love, or an acci- 
dent which causes one to give up his chosen calling 
in life, or the death of some beloved who was the 
center of one’s life. At such times one’s attention 
_ ceases to be focused on certain definite objects and 
becomes diffusive. The ordinary objects of response 
being taken away, and at the same time the whole 
organism pervasively stimulated, brings into play 
innumerable impulses without any determining ad- 
justment or established pattern. It is a state where 
one must necessarily be aware of concrete, unanal- 
yzed masses of experience that surge in upon one. 
We do not mean that there is any conceptualized 
cognition of these masses of experience. “That is 
exactly what we do not mean, for we have all 


4 Coe, Geo. A., Psychology of Religion, p. 100. 


38 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 


along insisted on the distinction between aware- 
ness of immediate experience and clear knowledge 
of an object. 

Among the lower animals, when the established 
course of conduct is blocked and there is no pattern 
of hehavior to guide, there is also an aimless fling- 
ing about. But among lower animals this flinging 
about always consists in running through a certain 
repertoire of more or less definite and established 
patterns of hebavior. Sometimes this is all the 
human does. But in the case of the human the 
great number of different impulses, some of them 
perhaps never before aroused, that may be quick- 
ened in such an hour, may produce that undefined 
awareness of the total passage of nature, the undis- 
ctiminated event. The bounds of awareness are 
greatly widened. The ordinary narrow and routin- 
ized selectiveness of attention is broken down, and 
instead of attending only to a few familiar data to 
the exclusion of all else, one becomes aware of a 
far larger portion of that totality of immediate 
experience which constantly flows over one. This 
is precisely what we have previously defined as the 
unique datum of religious experience. 

Now anything which breaks up the established 
system of response by which we react to the habitu- 
ally selected data, and throws our responses into 
confusion, may produce in us that simultaneity of 
innumerable responses by which we become aware 
of this movement of total experience. Whenever 
this befalls us we have that which at least those who 
have had appropriate religious training recognize as 


AND SCIENTIFIC METHOD 39 


the experience of God. Obstruction and bewilder- 
ment, we have said, is one thing which brings this 
on. But of course it is not the only thing. Gazing 
at the Grand Canon of the Colorado River may 
break down in one all his habitual systems of re- 
sponse and produce that simultaneity of innumer- 
able impulses by which one becomes more or less 
aware of the unanalyzed and unsifted stream. Fall- 
ing in love may produce this experience, if it breaks 
down one’s established system of response and 
fuses into one, total response innumerable impulses, 
new and old, through which one becomes aware of 
the flow of experience. Something of the same sort 
may be brought about by profound and affection- 
ate interchange of thought between intimate friends 
through which the deeps of response are stirred; 
or by the effect of an excited crowd upon the indi- 
vidual—a revival meeting, for instance. 

Perhaps the most common experience of God, 
however, has nothing to do with such great crises 
as we have indicated. This state of diffusive aware- 
ness, where habitual systems of response are resolved 
into an undirected, unselective aliveness of the total 
organism to the total event then ensuing, comes 
softly in the quiet hour, unannounced and unre- 
corded. Such experiences, we believe, are very 
common to many people, but here is the confession 


of H. G. Wells. 


At times in the silence of the night and in rare 
lonely moments, I come upon a sort of communion 
of myself and something great that is not myself. 
It is perhaps poverty of mind and language which 


40 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 


obliges me to say that this universal scheme takes 
on the effect of a sympathetic Person—and my 
communion a quality of fearless worship. These 
moments happen, and they are the supreme fact 
of my religious life to me; they are the crown of 
my religious experience.® 


This indefiniteness, inadequacy and uncertainty 
of the concept of the object experienced, which 
Wells indicates, shows what we have all along 
insisted on. Religious experience gives us an in- 
dubitable datum, which is more certain than knowl- 
edge, but it does not give us knowledge of God, 
except as it is correctly and exhaustively interpreted. 
One might have immediate experience of a bell and 
not know anything about a bell, have no concept 
of a bell, and never know that he was experiencing 
a bell. So also with the experience of God. 

With respect to the knowledge of God we feel 
that it is very important to distinguish between 
knowledge that we have experienced God and 
knowledge of what sort of object God is. Of these 
two stages of knowledge, the knowledge that we 
have experienced God is primary and most impor- 
tant. The value of clearly distinguishing the datum 
of religious experience is that it enables us to know 
that we experience God and when we experience 
God. All the values of religion per se, as distin- 
guished from theology, religious philosophy and 
religious ethics, is to be gotten from this experience 
of God. The values of this religious experience can 
be immeasurably enhanced by proper ideas about 


5 Wells, H. G., First and Last Things, quoted by Rufus Jones, op. cit. 


— 


ae 


AND SCIENTIFIC METHOD 41 


God, hence none can prize more highly than we a 
good theology, philosophy and ethics. But all these 
ideas about God cannot enhance the value of the 
experience if we do not have the experience. With- 
out the experience we have no religion at all. With 
the experience we may have a very bad sort of 
religion because of our false or inadequate ideas 
about God: namely, our philosophy, ethics and 
theology. But no matter how excellent these lat- 
ter may be, we have no religion at all if we do not 
have the experience. We must develop a better 
theology, philosophy and ethics. But most impor- 
tant of all we must cultivate religious experience, 
which is acquaintance with God. 

It is neglect of religious experience as such which 
is our chief danger in this age of scientific method. 
The more rigorous the scientific method, the more 
need have we of religious experience and the more 
need has science of this experience to keep it ever 
youthful and growing. But when the unique char- 
acter of religious experience is not clearly discerned 
and its indispensable value recognized, there is dan- 
ger that religious experience will be ignored and 
neglected in the wave of enthusiasm for scientific 
method which is now rising among us. 

When the value of religious experience is not put 
on an equal basis with that of scientific method and 
upheld as an indispensable rejuvenator of science, 
there is no danger that men will cease to have re- 
ligious experiences or cease to seek such experience. 
The need of religion is too deeply seated in our 
nature for that. But the danger is that the inter- 


42 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 


pretation of this experience, the philosophy, theol- 
ogy and ethics, which give character and direction 
to the vision and energy derived from religious 
experience, will degenerate. he danger is not that 
we shall cease to be religious, but that the quality of 
our religion will decline. Men will not cease to 
experience God, but their understanding of God 
will become more and more inadequate to the re- 
quirements of our life. Religion needs science as 
much as science needs religion. The evil effects of 
the divorce between the two is shown increasingly 
by the innumerable types of religion that are devel- 
oping among us. Note the esoteric literature, mental 
healing, star reading, alchemy, the cabala, trans- 
cendental magic, the higher and lower mysticism, 
Eastern scriptures, Spiritualism, Seventh-Day Ad- 
ventists, the Nazarenes, Pentecostals, Church of 
God, Swedenborgians, Pillars of Fire, Theosophists, 
Buddhists, New Thought, of many stripes, as Di- 
vine Science, House of Blessing, Home of Truth, 
Rawson Teaching, Circle of Divine Ministry, Prac- 
tical Christianity, Metaphysical Library, Unity 
Center, Practical Psychology, Fundamentalists, 
Modernists, etc., etc. We do not mean to lump all 
these together as equally bad or equally good. We 
only mean to say that such an amazing confusion 
of religions shows that there is something wrong 
in our treatment and interpretation of religious ex- 
perience. We do not deny but that members in all 
these sects may have genuine experience of God. 
But they cannot all interpret and apply the fruits 
of that experience equally well. This confusion in 


AND SCIENTIFIC METHOD 43 


the interpretation and application of the experience 
will go from bad to worse if science does not recog- 
nize the nature and value of religious experience 
and affiliate itself more closely therewith. 

What we have said of religious experience smacks 
strongly of Bergson. But we would be greatly mis- 
understood if our thought were identified with his. 
In order to avoid this confusion we must show 
wherein we differ from him. There are three points 
of difference. 

In the first place we do not agree with Bergson 
in saying that instinct gives us an awareness of the 
unanalyzed and unselected mass of experience. 
Instinct is simply the operation of certain auto- 
matic mechanisms of behavior. These mechanisms 
do, of course, determine the objects of our attention. 
But they are just the opposite of what Bergson says 
they are in this respect. They are highly selective. 
They do not render us responsive to, sensitive to, 
or conscious of, the unanalyzed flow of experience. 
On the contrary they are the first steps which the 
organism takes in selecting from the mass of stimuli 
which assails it, those particular elements which are 
of practical importance. If intellect deals with ex- 
perience in the interests of practice, certainly instinct 
does so no less. 

Our second point of difference has to do with 
identifying what Bergson calls intuition with 
knowledge. We are never fully aware of the unana- 
lyzed and unselected mass of experience in its 
original continuous flow. But we believe Bergson 
is right in saying that we may have various de- 


44 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 


grees of awareness of it. We have tried to show some 
of the situations which give rise to this awareness. 
But where Bergson makes his mistake, we believe, is 
in identifying this immediate awareness of experi- 
ence with knowledge, and treating it as a peculiar 
kind of knowledge different from intellectual cog- 
nition and designated by the term intuition. This 
only leads to confusion. Our awareness of the con- 
tinuous flow of experience is not different in kind 
from our immediate awareness of a touch or a 
sound, except that in the former the work of anal- 
ysis and selection of data has not been carried so 
far as in the latter. 

Our third point of difference has to do with 
metaphysics. Because of his initial error of confus- 
ing immediate experience with knowledge, Bergson 
is led to the conclusion that through our awareness 
of the continuous flow of experience we have in- 
tuitive knowledge of ultimate reality and that this 
ultimate reality is a continuous stream of experience 
without thought and without purpose, but which is 
ever evolving into something further, the something 
further being wholly undetermined and unknown 
until actually achieved. In contradistinction to this 
we have maintained that our immediate experience 
of God is merely a datum, and taken by itself alone 
gives us no knowledge concerning the character of 
God. Because this datum is a continuous, unseg- 
mented flow of experience, we cannot immediately 
jump to the conclusion that God is a universal, un- 
thinking, unpurposing flow of experience, any more 
than we can conclude that a chair is a disembodied 


Se ee 


a 


AND SCIENTIFIC METHOD 45 


pressure because our immediate experience of chair 
is that of pressure. 

The experience of God by itself alone does not 
constitute religion. One must interpret that ex- 
perience before he has a religion. And from time 


immemorial man has given some interpretation to 


his experience of God. This interpretation has 
been just as crude, grotesque and diverse as his in- 
terpretation of other experiences. He is subject to 
the same errors in the interpretation of this datum 
as in any other attempts to understand that which 
befalls him. He can hope to correct these errors 
only as he subjects his interpretation to the only 
methods we have for detecting error and revealing 
truth. 

While we have no science of God in the strict 
sense, yet science has not been without its influence 
upon our ideas of Him. Advancement in one 
branch of knowledge cannot occur without influ- 
encing all other branches, and generally in the way 
of correcting error. So our ideas of God are under- 
going, and have for centuries undergone, correction 
under the influence of science and pre-scientific in- 
vestigation and thought. 

Finally it must be made clear that any science or 
near science of God which may ever be developed 
will have all the limitations of scientific method, 
such as we shall later note. Scientific method 
as applied to God, or to anything else, tends con- 
stantly to refine its data, excluding everything ir- 
relevant and constraining imagination to follow 
certain prescribed forms. But what can be said to 


46 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 


be irrelevant to God? Perhaps nothing is irrele- 
vant to Him. But the nature of scientific method 
requires simplification of data and therefore neces- 
sarily the casting out of much that is irrelevant. 
Hence the science of God will need to be counter- 
balanced by the mystic experience just as every sci- 
ence requires such correction and rejuvenation. We 
are already very familiar with the growing sterility 
of theology unless renewed and corrected by such 
immediate and mystic experiences. Nevertheless, 
we need a science of God as we need a science of 
any other important object with which humans 
must deal. Such a science will have all the dangers 
of sterility and vital impoverishment which we find 
in all sciences; and it will be peculiarly dangerous 
because it will lay its bonds upon the ultimate 
sources of that mystic experience which is the 
greatest counter balance to all scientific method. 
But we trust that as science draws closer and closer 
to our knowledge of God we shall learn how to 
correct its abstractions by means of concrete expe- 
rience. And above all, as we shall try to show in 
a later chapter, love solves the problem of how to 
combine the truth of science with rich concrete 
awareness of the object known. 

But the fact that we have no science of God and 
possibly may never have must not be taken to 
mean that we have no true knowledge of Him. 
Without a science we have no accurate method of 
verifying our ideas and certainly distinguishing be- 
tween truth and error. Therefore it behooves 
every one to hold his ideas concerning God with 


CO ee ee a ae ee ee 


AND SCIENTIFIC METHOD 47 


an open mind, being absolutely certain only of the 
fact that God is, on the grounds already mentioned. 
But the fact that we cannot verify our ideas about 
God, nor distinguish with certainty between truth 
and error, in no way implies that we do not possess 
much truth about Him. Men always have much 
knowledge more or less true, long before it can be 
scientifically verified. [he same is true of our 
knowledge of God. 


CHAPTER II 
SCIENCE THE CORRECTIVE OF RELIGION 


Christianity needs science to free it of sentimen- 
tality. Sentimentality is not a little thing as some 
would think, but a dry rot that destroys religion at 
its roots. One of the most common and danger- 
ous forms of sentimentality that fastens itself on 
Christianity is what we shall call the evocative use 
of words. 

SENTIMENTALITY 

Words may be used either to designate an object 
or evoke a sentiment. In the evocative’ use, when 
it becomes sentimental, the word is used for the 
sake of the sentiment attached to the word rather 
than for the purpose of designating some object. 
In ordinary language the word ought properly to 
fade out of sight as soon as it has served its proper 
function of referring to some object. This proper 
use of words we shall call the designative, to dis- 
tinguish it from the evocative. In the designative 
usage all sentiment attached to the word is avoided 
as much as possible in order that any sentiment, if 
there be sentiment, shall attach itself to the object 
designated. There is, of course, an aesthetic use 


1 This distinction between evocative and designative use of words is 
developed by Ogden and Richards in their Meaning of Meaning, which is an 
excellent analysis of language as a tool of thought. 


48 


— - ee _ . . _ 


ee ee ee ee 


AND SCIENTIFIC METHOD 49 


of words in which the sound and subtle associa- 
tions of the words are of more importance than 
what it designates. This is quite proper in poetry 
and music. But it becomes dishonest, and in mat- 
ters of great practical importance, disastrous, to 
pretend to use words for designating objects when 
one is really using them for the sake of their senti- 
mental associations. For instance the word ‘‘the 
Cross’’ is very commonly used by Christian people. 
The critical question is: Does the glow of senti- 
ment aroused by that word attach itself to some 
specific object to which the word refers, or does it 
attach itself to the word itself? If the former, we 
would ask just what is that specific object? Is it 
two pieces of timber attached to one another cross- 
wise? If so, then we claim that the word is used 
evocatively, because two pieces of timber are not 
proper objects of any such glow of sentiment or 
high valuation, and this value would never attach 
to pieces of timber were it not for irrelevant asso- 
ciations with “mother’s knee’ and a “picture on 
the wall’’ and the days of childhood, and the 
“little brown church in the vale’ and the “‘prayer 
at bedtime’ and so on indefinitely and wearisomely. 
We do not mean to imply that the word “‘the 
Cross’” has no specific object which it ought 
properly to designate in Christian usage. On the 
contrary our claim is precisely that it does have 
such an object and that therefore any one who uses 
the word to designate two pieces of timber with 
mawkish sentimentality is guilty of treachery to 
the genuine and proper object of designation. 


50 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 


What has been said of ‘‘the Cross’ would apply 
equally to a host of other words, such as ‘“‘the 
Word,” ‘‘the Blood,” ‘‘the Spirit of Christ,” 
“love,” “brotherhood,” etc., etc. These are dan- 
gerous words and should be rarely used if one 
reckons among the dangers of living the likelihood 
of becoming a traitor to the Christian faith through 
transferring loyalty from the proper objects of 
faith to the words that designate those objects. 
Compare a group of engineers and a group of 
churchmen, respectively, each gathered together to 
discuss means of preventing, say, an impending 
war. All people are likely to fall into the senti- 
mental use of words. But the engineers are much 
less likely to do so than churchmen, we believe. 
They are much more likely to use words to desig- 
nate certain facts. “To avoid ambiguities, and di- 
vest their language of those sentiments which so 
readily accrue to words in common usage, they 
often resort to technical terms, because technical 
terms are more precisely defined. Also they know 
the danger of using common words. They know 
that common words very readily gather irrelevant 
associations as a ship gathers barnacles. The word 
“Bolshevik” is an extreme example, few people 
using it to designate any specific object. But for 
engineers, speaking generally, it is the facts which 
engage their attention, rather than the words used 
to designate the facts. “The churchmen, on the 
other hand, are prone to try to solve the problem 
by words that exhilarate more than illuminate. 
“When a public speaker has no clear view of the 


,! (eo eee ee eee ee ee 


= pny 


re rary 


ee eg ee ee ee ane ee ea eee 


AND SCIENTIFIC METHOD 51 


solution of his own problem, he always winds up 
by recommending the spirit of Christ. It never 
fails to bring salvos of applause. The people walk 
out with a rapture of exhilaration, believing they 
have actually got somebody out of trouble—the 
Armenians, or the citizens of Fiume, or some 
equally unhappy persons.’’? 

Why is this treacherous weakness so deep and 
pervasive throughout prevalent Christianity? 
There are two reasons for it, we believe. 

First, institutional Christianity has staked its 
success on the use of words. It has made talking 
its one preéminent agent of achievement. It 
measures its success by the number of people who 
will come out to hear a man talk. Now when 
talk is made to uphold such an enormous burden 
as this, it is bound to be twisted out of shape like 
steel girders before an avalanche. If crowds must 
be gathered and swayed by words, and if one man 
must do this twice a week or oftener, he is forced 
to make an evocative use of words. People will not 
sit and listen to words, and come in crowds to do 
so, unless, either the words designate certain facts 
of great interest, or else the words themselves thrill 
them, charm them, exhilarate them, bewitch them. 
But if it be the facts that interest them, they will 
not be content with listening to words about those 
facts. They will want to have more intimate con- 
verse with the facts. They will be content to 
listen to further words only occasionally, as these 
words may guide them into further and more inti- 


2 Wiggam, A. E., The New Decalogue of Science. 


a2 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 


mate experience of the facts. They will not be 
content merely to come regularly week by week to 
hear a man talk about these facts. It is not at all 
improbable that they might become so engaged 
with the facts as sometimes to be irregular in their 
attendance on the speaking of words about the 
facts. There should be some other standard for 
measuring the success of a church besides the num- 
ber of regular attendants on the words. 

A typical instance of this ‘Christian’ faith in 
words rather than in God, came to the writer's 
attention some time ago. A speaker was address- 
ing a group of students concerning the power 
which comes to the Christian by virtue of his reli- 
gion and which must be the mark of a genuine 
Christian. He told of a young man who attained 
the highest honors in a great institution of learn- 
ing. But when he came back to his home and 
attempted to speak in the cause of Christianity his 
speech stumbled; he could not hold the attention 
of his hearers. “The moral drawn was that this 
young man had lost the power of the Christian 
faith. Evidently the power of the Christian faith 
was here identified with a glib tongue. It would 
seem that Christian power had nothing to do with 
the use of test tubes and statistical graphs; nothing 
to do with isolating the germ of influenza or dis- 
covering some such social device as the secret ballot 
by which more honest voting could be assured. 
Above all, it seemed to ignore that simple, unword- 
able devotion of friendship which is the most 


OE 


AND SCIENTIFIC METHOD 53 


effective means of moulding human lives and is in 
no wise dependent upon glibness of speech. 

A second reason why Christians are addicted to 
the evocative use of words is the obscurity of the 
objects with which Christian discourse is concerned. 
Scientific discourse refers to objects which can be 
clearly defined and very thoroughly investigated. 
Science is able to do this simply because it charts 
out a certain field of data which lie within the 
limits of its comprehension and investigation, and 
deliberately ignores everything which exceeds these 
narrow limits. It prunes down the objects to the 
limits of its own powers of definition and minute 
examination. But this Christianity cannot do. 
This religion cannot do by reason of the nature 
of religion. Religion must deal with the total con- 
crete fact, even as love must. It must stretch the 
understanding to the dimensions of the Fact, not 
cut down the Fact to the dimensions of the under- 
standing. Hence words of religious discourse refer 
to objects not clearly definable. This opens the 
way for sentimentality in the use of words. 

What we have just stated is an excuse for evoca- 
tive use of words in Christian discourse, but it is 
not a justification. The obscurity of the object 
does not make inevitable the evocative use of 
words. On the contrary, words that refer to ob- 
scure objects can be just as designative as are scien- 
tific terms if the obscure objects are certainly 
known. Obscurity must not be confused with un- 
certainty. [he objective, concrete existence of the 
religious object is certainly known to those 


54 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 


acquainted with God, but he is obscurely known. 
When certainly known, the words used to refer to 
this concrete objective existence can be just as des- 
ignative, if we are careful to make them so, as 
scientific words, although they cannot be as defini- 
tive of the object as are scientific terms in the exact 
sciences. 

There is a third reason why Christian people 
become addicted to the sentimental use of words 
to the great harm of their religion. It is the re- 
quirements of religious ceremonial. “The ceremony 
of public religious worship requires the evocative 
use of words. This is necessary if public worship 
is to be conducted properly and serve its rightful 
function of preparing the mind for the worship 
of God. Such being the case it is readily seen why 
those who have official charge of the conduct of 
such worship would become addicted to the evoca- 
tive use of words in all matters that pertain to re- 
ligion. Even when they are not conducting the 
ceremony of religious worship the habit persists. 
It is also natural that people who habitually par- 
ticipate in such worship should fall into the habit 
of using words in this way whenever they discuss 
matters in the name of religion. 

The cure for this evil is not to abolish religious 
ceremonial. On the contrary, the ceremonies of 
public worship are highly valuable and must be 
developed far beyond their present efficiency; and 
such ceremonies must always use words evocatively. 
But the cure of the evil is carefully to guard against 
transferring the evocative use of words in ceremony 


ee 


AND SCIENTIFIC METHOD oe 


where it is quite proper, into other departments and 
times and places where the evocative use is im- 
proper. ‘The ceremonial and the expository de- 
partments of religious edification must be kept 
clearly distinct. Religious ceremony which does 
not designate facts, but only prepares the mind 
for worship by breaking down those practical and 
theoretical attitudes which render the mystic expe- 
rience impossible, may properly use words evoca- 
tively, as lovers do. The ceremony must play 
upon the mind in such a way as to make it recep- 
tive to that unsifted mass of experience by which 
one perceives God. But when it comes to desig- 
nating facts, as in expounding ideas about God, 
in presentation of practical problems or the like, 
words have a wholly different function. These 
two functions must be kept separate. 

Let us see a little more clearly why ceremony 
must use words evocatively. Its function, as we 
have seen, is to prepare the mind to worship, to put 
the individual in that state of mind in which he is 
able to perceive God. That means that the 
jammed doors of the mind must be wedged open 
so that the fullness of experience may stream into 
the field of awareness and thus make God percep- 
tible to the worshipper. There are two agencies 
which are best adapted to wedge open the doors of 
the mind. One is art and the other is love. Cere- 
mony makes use of both of these. 

It is very plain that religious ceremony is a work 
of art. There is music and rythmic intonation, 
there is harmony of color and motion. Even the 


56 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 


Puritan had his aesthetic demands for an austere 
and stately form of worship. But words cannot en- 
ter into a work of art unless they become evocative 
as wellas designative. Itis not their logical designa- 
tion, but their sound and their associations, which 
make them acceptable to the aesthetic sense. Here, 
then, we have the first reason why evocative use of 
words in religious ceremony is inevitable. ‘The 
aesthetic requirements of ceremony demand it. 

The second agency which conducts the mind 
toward the mystic perception of God is love. 
Love, even more than art,.enables the mind to enter 
into that fullness of sensory experience which is 
the nearest approach to worship. ‘“‘He that loveth 
not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he 
love God whom he hath not seen.’’ Among those 
who are gathered together for worship love must 
reign, and so it does, at least in theory. Ideally a 
group of worshippers is a beloved community. 
But love, rightly and of necessity, must use words 
evocatively. When a mother babbles to her child 
she plainly is not designating objects. She is sim- 
ply evoking a sentiment in herself or in the child 
or in both. When two lovers are together and 
express themselves by such words as ‘‘darling”’ and 
‘dearest’ they are using words evocatively. Wher- 
ever words are used to express and evoke a senti- 
ment, rather than to designate an object, they are 
used evocatively. In religious ceremony it is sought 
to express and evoke the sentiment of love. Hence 
the words used must be evocative. 

The first requirement, then, if we are to keep 


2 _—_ " - 
EO ee 


AND SCIENTIFIC METHOD 57 


religious ceremony from contaminating the desig- 
native use of words in religious thought is frankly 
to admit the evocative nature of ceremonial words. 
This will keep us from the confusion which is so 
fatal. 

A second requirement necessary to guard against 
sentimentality in language is to avoid using cere- 
monial words except when engaged in the ceremony 
itself. When, for instance, we are engaged in the 
discussion of religious matters in a theoretical or 
practical way, seeking to designate certain objects 
rather than cultivate the mystic state of worship, 
we should use other words, even when referring to 
the same objects as those with which the ceremo- 
nial words are associated. Also the words used to 
designate a certain object, especially those obscure 
objects which engage the attention of religion, 
should be constantly varied. If we constantly use 
the same word or phrase to refer to the same object 
the word will quickly gather to itself a sentiment 
of its own. Thus thought and sentiment will 
gradually become detached from the object and at- 
tached to the word. ‘Thus we shall gradually 
betray the objects of religious veneration by 
detracting attention from them to the words used. 

This use of words may block the way to God 
even for the isolated individual worshipper. When 
he repairs to worship he hits on a word or phrase 
or other symbol. What does it mean? Does it 
mean God? ‘To mean is to refer to. But for Him 
these symbols do not refer directly to God but to 
some other words. What do these words mean? 


58 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 


Still other words. And so he goes on from words 
to still other words, not so much by logical defini- 
tion as by idle association, until he hits on some- 
thing which gives a rich glow of exhilaration 
because of its irrelevant associations. It may be a 
phrase taught him at his mother’s knee or con- 
nected with something else of dear memory. It 
may be a bit of imagery of some sort. But in any 
case he stops with it and indulges in a gush of sen- 
timentality. “Then he comes away from his ‘‘wor- 
ship’’ with a deep sense of sanctification, much 
soothed in spirit and very complacent. By per- 
sistency such a worshipper may so immerse him- 
self in sentimentality as to become blind to all un- 
pleasant facts about him, insensitive to every 
appeal, incapable and unwilling to lift a finger to 
help his fellow men, and able to gloat and fiddle 
while Rome burns. 

Now such a “‘worshipper’’ has not found God 
at all. He has only found some symbol with rich 
associations attached to it. Such a symbol may be 
of great service in preparing the mind for worship. 
All worshippers, perhaps, make use of such sym- 
bols. But for the true worshipper they are means, 
not ends. [hey are not the objects referred to, 
but the instruments of reference which refer the 
worshipper on to’ the divine Object. To the true 
worshipper such a symbol is the medium through 
which he discerns God. But to the sentimentalists, 
it is an obstacle which blocks the way to God. He 
looks at it, rather than through it. He gloats upon 
it, rather than uses it. 


eS 


Ee — ee Oe ee eee, 


AND SCIENTIFIC METHOD 59 


This error of the sentimental worshipper is the 
evil of idle dreaming. It is an evil into which wor- 
shippers are often likely to fall. It is the idle fol- 
lowing of fancy rather than the strenuous discern- 
ment of objective fact. It has often been confused 
with mysticism because mystics or pseudo-mystics 
have so often fallen into it. It has put mysticism 
into bad repute among many. Because of this idfe 
dreaming the logical thinker and practical worker 
have scorned mysticism. But they have confused 
true mystic discernment with idle dreaming. They 
are right in denouncing what they denounce; but 
they fail to see that true mysticism does not properly 
come under their denunciation. 


TRADITION 

As scientific method serves to save Christianity 
from sentimentality, so also it may deliver religion 
from the bondage of tradition. Tradition has its 
rightful place in any religion, as we shall take pains 
to show, but religion is peculiarly liable to suffo- 
cation from an overgrowth of tradition uncritically 
accepted. Tradition perverts religion unless the 
critical mind is turned upon it; and the critical 
mind is science. As Francis Bacon so clearly an- 
nounced, the first task of science is to turn upon 
tradition with criticism. The great fight of scien- 
tific method has always been against the inertia of 
tradition. 

Mysticism, without the support of science, can- 
not deliver religion from the dead hand of tradi- 
tion. On this matter no one has better spoken than 


60 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 


Dean Inge, himself a great mystic and expounder 
of mysticism. 


The mystic who refuses to analyze or criticise 
his intuitions is often baffled by the emptiness or 
formlessness of his religious conceptions, and so 
tends to fall back upon the clearly defined images 
or symbols which his church provides. He ac- 
cepts these on authority, since he is not interested 
in the proofs of them, and would even value them 
less if they were based on ordinary evidence. 
Whether consciously or not, he only needs them 
as helps to his imagination. But they may easily 
become so indispensable to him that he will be 
as stiff a dogmatist as if his Faith really rested on 
external authority; and he will often protest 
vehemently that external authority, in the form 
of supernaturally revealed doctrines, is in truth 
the basis of his Faith, which would fall in ruins 
if this support were withdrawn. Just because the 
dogmas of his church are accepted uncritically, as 
outside discussion, they are capable of being used as 
external suports of a Faith which in reality sprang 
up independently of them, and only requires them 
to give form and colour to its vague intuitions. 
The typical dogmatist is a confused half-mystic, 
whose intuitive Faith is neither strong enough nor 
clear enough to bring him strength or comfort. 
He accordingly fortifies himself by calling in the 
help of an external authority, whose credentials 
he would think it impious to investigate, and 
willingly accepts its guidance whenever the inner 
light burns dim.*® 


3 Faith aud Its Psychology, p. 82. 


AND SCIENTIFIC METHOD 61 


This combination of mystic and uncritical tra- 
ditionalist, makes the worst kind of bigot. He is 
the fiery defender of the faith who cannot rest nor 
let any others rest and who will sacrifice his own 
happiness and the happiness of those that are dear 
to him. He will not compromise nor yield on any 
point. He is a fanatic. He is genuinely sincere. 
We cannot help but respect him if we know him 
well. He is a victim of that tradition which gives 
“form and colour to his vague intuitions.’’ He is 
a victim quite as much as those whom he perse- 
cutes. It is the business of science, when properly 
adjusted to religion, to save such victims and to 
deliver religious faith from such perversions. There 
has been far, far too much of it in the history of 
all religions. 

But religion cannot dispense with tradition. 
Neither can science, for that matter. It is not a 
matter of discarding tradition; it is a matter of in- 
terpreting and criticizing tradition. Christianity 
is peculiarly dependent upon tradition. 

Christianity in a very broad sense consists of 
teachings and sentiments which have been devel- 
oped throughout many centuries by innumerable 
men, and transmitted to the individual by tradi- 
tion, so that he comes to his immediate experience 
of God equipped with these ideas and sentiments 
for interpreting his experience and discerning its 
significance. Thus only can he have Christian 
acquaintance with God. 

Christianity in a somewhat narrower sense 


62 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 


would be those teachings and sentiments which 
would be developed if we could limit the source 
from which they were derived solely to the expert- 
ence and utterances recorded in the Old and New 
Testament. But asa fact this is impossible, for the 
teachings of the Bible come down to us through the 
transmitting medium of the thought and life of 
many generations of men, and especially through 
the medium of the thought of our own age. This 
medium gives color and form to whatever meaning 
we derive from the Bible, and any one who thinks 
he can escape the influence of this medium through 
which he reads the Bible, simply puts himself in 
the narrow bondage of some special tradition which 
probably distorts the original meaning of the book 
more than most mediums. 

Christianity, in still a narrower sense, would be 
those sentiments and teachings about God which 
would arise if we could limit their source solely to 
the life of Jesus Christ. Needless to say this is even 
farther removed from our actual Christianity than 
that described in the preceding paragraph. 

Christian worship, then, as found in the world 
today, consists of two parts: The immediate expe- 
rience of God through mysticism; and the signifi- 
cance of this experience as revealed by the teachings 
and sentiments handed down to the individual by 
way of Christian tradition, and preéminently 
through the Christian church. These traditions 
are constantly subject to correction by study of the 
Bible and especially study of the life and teachings 


Oe eee a ee See ae 


——, — ST 


—. - ee 


<r ee 


=. & = 


AND SCIENTIFIC METHOD 63 


of Jesus. But these teachings and sentiments do not 
of themselves yield acquaintance with God. They 
yield only knowledge about God. They can enter 
into one’s acquaintance with God only when they 
are used to reveal the significance of that immediate 
experience which one attains in mystic worship. 
The God-acquainted Christian must, then, have 
two things: (1) the immediate experience: and 
(2) the teachings which interpret that experience. 
And no man is truly a Christian unless he has both. 
Only then does he belong to the God-acquainted. 

Let us quote again from Dean Inge, this time 
concerning the rightful place of tradition or, as he 
prefers to call it, authority, in religion. ‘The 
office of authority in religion is essentially educa- 
tional. Like every good teacher, it should labour 
to make itself superfluous. The instructor should 
not rest content till his pupil says, ‘Now I believe 
not on thy saying but because I see and know for 
myself.’ ’” We do not believe that authority can 
ever become superfluous if it is identified with tra- 
dition. It can shape and guide the original experi- 
ence of the worshipper, and the worshipper can 
shape and reinterpret it, so that the two fuse into 
one thought by which God is known. But with 
the wealth of tradition at our disposal and with 
any growing wealth of original experience, the 
time is never reached when some further readjust- 
ment is not required between authority and imme- 
diate experience of God. 

And it is in this work of readjustment that scien- 


64 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 


tific method has its part to play. Tradition can be 
analyzed, reinterpreted, and properly applied to 
the interpretation of original experience only by 
those methods of accurate thinking which go by the 
name of science. 


CHAPTER ITI 
THOUGHT AND WORSHIP 


In all that we have said of religion’s needs of 
science we do not want to give the impression that 
we think religion can ever become a science. It can 
never become a science any more than love or aes- 
thetic appreciation can. A correct understanding 
of the object is only one ingredient that enters into 
worship, love and aesthetic appreciation. In fact 
these three can develop to a high degree with very 
little correct knowledge of the object. And yet 
these three almost inevitably take on pathological 
forms if illusions continue to develop without cor- 
rection. Cognition of the object is one ingredient, 
even though it be but one. Science has its contri- 
bution to make to the welfare of this side of life, 
although it can never be substituted for this side. 
Religion, because of its essential nature, is eternally 
to be distinguished from scientific knowledge pure 
and simple. Worship must absorb science, but it 
must go on beyond science. It must not contra- 
vene the verified conclusions of scientific method, 
but it must not be narrowed down to scientific 
knowledge pure and simple. For it is more than 
knowledge. It is love. 

65 


66 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 


We must try to show how scientific thought can 
be taken up into worship, love and aesthetic appre- 
ciation; how these latter can transform scientific 
knowledge without contravening it. Science is cog- 
nition in its more rigorous form; and we want this 
most rigorous form of cognition in our apprehen- 
sion of our beloved and of our God. But such sci- 
entific cognition by itself alone can never satisfy us 
in dealing with that which we love and worship. 
How can we be true to science and yet exceed sci- 
ence? ‘That is our problem. 

To indicate the way in which love and worship 
may incorporate and yet exceed the conclusions of 
scientific method we shall adopt the word contem- 
plation. We shall use it in a slightly different 
sense than its ordinary usage allows, and yet we 
believe we shall not depart altogether from its com- 
mon meaning. We believe it is sometimes used in 
our sense. 

The chief objection to the term contemplation 
is that it seems to connote passivity. So it does oft- 
times, but not necessarily. It is possible for most 
strenuous endeavor to be contemplative. An in- 
fant is contemplating an object when he is squeez- 
ing it, rubbing, licking, sucking, pressing, poking, 
prying, dropping, picking up again, etc. He is en- 
deavoring to experience it completely, to take it all 
in, to draw from it all the qualities it is capable of 
yielding, and to re-experience those qualities until 
they become familiar. He is striving to cognize 
the total, concrete object. ‘The enthusiastic mech- 
anician who has a passion for machinery is con- 


ee eT 


AND SCIENTIFIC METHOD 67 


templating when he works upon it, however prac- 
tical his achievement. He delights in repairing, 
constructing, and reconstructing machinery because 
in that way he is able to react to it in its totality. 
The concrete totality of the mechanism, all its parts 
and their interrelations, can be most completely 
grasped by him and become, as a concrete whole, 
the object of his response, only as he thus works 
with it. Hence his work with machinery is joy- 
ous work. The same is true of a mother caring for 
her infant. She may make use of the child, but 
the child is more than a utility. She may theorize 
about the child, but the child is more to her than 
merely an object on which to experiment to the 
end of testing and developing her concepts. It is 
a concrete object which she endeavors to compre- 
hend in its totality. She may be most strenuously 
active in her care of the child, and this activity 
may yield the satisfaction of any primitive instinct. 
But it differs from the biological instincts as the 
play of the child differs from the play of lower 
animals. In both cases the humans, both the 
mother in care of the infant and the child at play, 
seem to be actuated by the endeavor to compre- 
hend the concrete totality of the object, while the 
lower animals only go through a more or less fixed 
repertoire of actions. The puppy never plays he 
is a little man, but the child does play he is a little 
dog and much else besides, for in so doing he am- 
plifies his experience and comprehends more of 
that with which he deals. So the mother in her 
care of the infant labors to ‘‘take it all in’’ and finds 


68 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 


delight in all her work with it because she so fulfills 
this desire. So likewise we might make a study of 
all forms of joyous work. Always we find that the 
contemplative element enters in. 

There is, however, justification for the preva- 
lent view that contemplation is a passive state, for 
it often takes that form. But the passivity is only 
due to our limited capacity to appreciate any more 
than what has already been experienced. Hence 
we cease to extend the range of our experience by 
further activity and give ourselves over to review- 
ing and appreciating that which is already acces- 
sible to our minds from past experience and imme- 
diate sensations. Additional experience would only 
disturb and hinder our comprehension of the total 
object. Our capacity for contemplation has certain 
limits and when we try to go beyond these, con- 
templation breaks down and our{ mental attitude 
reverts to the narrow bounds of the practical and 
theoretical. To avoid this, contemplation guards 
itself by assuming the passive state. But even 
when thus passive sp far as overt behavior is con- 
cerned, we are perhaps responsive to many more 
stimuli when contemplating than when engaged in 
a purely practical theoretical undertaking. 

The chief significance of contemplation for us 
just now is that it represents that kind of cognition 
which may be highly scientific and yet is more than 
science. It is the form in which thought and in- 
tellectual rigor can enter into religion. In contem- 
plation worship can absorb all that science has to 
offer and yet exceed science. [To make this plain 


7 alts” rane ener 


AND SCIENTIFIC METHOD 69 


let us contrast the three mental attitudes we have 
already referred to several times, the practical, the 
theoretical, and the contemplative. 

There are some objects which we cognize only 
to that degree and in that way which will enable us 
to use them for the satisfying of some urgent need. 
This is the practical attitude. Other objects we 
note only with respect to those features which are 
relevant to some theory, to the end of testing and 
reshaping the theory or classifying the object. 
This is the theoretical type. In both practical and 
theoretical attitudes we ignore most of the experi- 
ence which pertains to the object. In the contem- 
plative attitude, however, we are receptive to all 
the experience which seems to pertain to the object. 
We may cognize a child in the practical attitude. 
We study how to deal with him So as to get him to 
do our will with the least sound and fury. Or, 
being a student of genetic psychology, we consider 
him with a view to testing some theory. But if 
we love the child we may sometimes contemplate 
him. In so doing we may keep true to all that 
practice and theory has revealed about him; but 
our attitude toward him is very different and what 
we discern in him far exceeds what enters our 
minds as we theorize or practically deal with him. 
Far more of the concrete total individuality of the 
child comes to our knowledge when we contemplate 
him. 

Contemplation is scientific but much more than 
science, because it involves what approximates the 
response of the total personality to the concrete 


70 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 


object, while in the practical and theoretical atti- 
tudes only fractions of the personality respond to 
certain selected features of the object. 

Thinking dominated by the practical attitude 
is most common. Men ordinarily do not like to 
think, but do so only when in trouble and in 
order to get out. They think to rid themselves of 
annoyance, protect themselves from danger, reach 
a place of security, or free themselves from the 
need of further thinking. Such thinking is a striv- 
ing to escape from the difficult situation in which 
thinking is required into that where automatic 
habits are sufficient to meet all demands. It is an 
attempt to adjust habits in such a way that they 
can operate without the need of further thought. 
Y7e do not think as long as the street car runs 
according to schedule and we can get downtown 
merely by following our automatic habits of walk- 
ing, riding, etc. But when the street car ceases to 
run, we begin to think how we can get downtown. 
As long as our feet carry us automatically, whither 
we will, we do not think about our walking. But 
when something obstructs our path, when our feet 
stick or begin to sink, our walking comes under the 
direction of thinking. Instrumental thinking oc- 
curs whenever our established habits are disturbed 
and our sole motive is to regain the mindless auto- 
matism of the habitual routine. In instrumental 
thinking we never rise out of the old ruts except 
when forced out, and then our thinking is solely 
for the purpose of getting into the old rut, or else 
developing a new rut as narrow and confining as 


—— a 


AND SCIENTIFIC METHOD wih 


the old one. Instrumental thinking strives to get 
into a situation where thinking will no longer be 
necessary. 

But under the dominance of the theoretical atti- 
tude thinking may change its complexion quite 
completely and become a form of play. Because 
of the pleasure which some people find in mental 
gymnastics, we might call this hedonistic think- 
ing. It may take the form of argumentation upon 
almost any subject whatsoever. Interest in Chin- 
ese puzzles, chess, riddles, invention of queer de- 
vices, and the satisfaction of idle curiosity, in 
almost any field, all display it. William James 
describes this motive to thought by the term ‘“The 
Sentiment of Rationality.’’ The delight of hedon- 
istic thinking is the pleasure of finding some ab- 
stract order running through the countless details 
of the concrete world. “The Chinese puzzle is a 
wild confusion until one “‘gets the hang”’ of it, and 
then it resolves itself into a beautiful order. The 
same is true of the mathematical problem, of the 
chess game, or the invention of a device out of a 
heterogeneous aggregation of things. For we 
must understand that mechanical invention by no 
means always has the practical motive behind it. 
For the scientist, engaged in what is called pure 
science as distinguished from applied, the universe, 
or rather some selected portion of it, is a Chinese 
puzzle in which he seeks to discover some order. 
According to his starting point he may discover 
many different orders for his delight. Philosophers 
share this motive to no less degree. Josiah Royce 


72 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 


and Bertrand Russell have both confessed to this 
hedonism of thought, finding in it a pleasure with- 
out regard to any use it might have. The inter- 
minable maze of intellectual operations we some- 
times find in philosophic, mathematical and scien- 
tific endeavors plainly could never have been devel- 
oped had there not been a strong hedonistic tone 
in the mental operations themselves. 

We wish to say nothing in disparagement of 
such a motive to thought, nor of such thinking. 
Some of the greatest services to mankind have come 
out of the results of such thinking. The very use- 
fulness of science consists to a large degree in free- 
ing the scientist from the constraint of immediate, 
practical needs. He must wander far and wide into 
unknown territory, not knowing what he shall 
find. Others besides Saul have found a kingdom 
by accident. But it is plain that such thinking is 
not religious. It is not of necessity anti-religious. 
Furthermore, the products of such thinking can be 
taken up into religion just as they may be taken 
up into practical life. But one cannot investigate 
God or the religious experience in this spirit and at 
the same time be in a worshipful attitude. Indeed 
if this were the only way one cognized any object 
of experience he would never know God as the 
religious person knows Him. The genetic psy- 
chologist can never know the child as the parent 
knows him, unless the psychologist can also love 
and contemplate. The geneteic psychologist may 
assist the parent to know his own child, but it is 
the parent and not the psychologist who will know 


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AND SCIENTIFIC METHOD 73 


the child most profoundly, providing the parent 
is willing to learn from the psychologist. And this 
will not be due to the fact that the parent has more , 
constant association with the child and so will learn 
much from trial and error. We refer to something 
very different. We refer to that receptivity to the 
concrete experience of child which goes only with 
the contemplative attitude. We refer, furthermore, 
to that response of innumerable impulses in the 
parent to the child, which are not awakened in the 
psychologist. All this wealth of experience and 
response in the parent will not necessarily yield 
correct knowledge. The parent may be subject to 
most grotesque illusions concerning the child. But 
if the parent is willing to learn from the psychol- 
ogist, to have his errors corrected and his ideas clar- 
ified, then he can know the child as the psychologist 
never can. 

Now all this applies to science and religion. The 
theoretical attitude is not the worshipful attitude 
and never can be. We can never cognize God by 
theoretical thinking alone, and have any religion. 
But if science and religion were rightly adjusted to 
one another, the worshipper of God could profit 
as much by science as the loving parent can profit 
by the genetic psychologist. 

In contemplation the skeleton of scientific theory 
is clothed with a mass of concrete experience which 
makes the object very much more than what it is 
described to be by the scientific theory. The scien- 
tific theory may be correct, but it falls far short 
of the total object as cognized in contemplation. 


74 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 


The glowing eye, the yellow curls, the ruddy cheek, 
but more important still, all that which we have 
experienced in the child in the past which makes 
up our “‘apperceptive mass’ as we contemplate him 
—the deeds and words, and triumphs and sorrows, 
all that has entered into his life in so far as it is pre- 
served in our minds as we look upon him—all this 
we behold in the child. And all of this, or at any 
rate much of it, is fact. It is that which we know. 

In the same way also we may know God. When 
the total Object of all our experience becomes for 
us an object of contemplation, we discern that 
which stirs us deeply, that which awakens in us 
the religious attitude. There flows in upon us 
masses of experience, somewhat after the fashion 
that experience rolls in upon us in contemplating 
the child; but in the case of cognizing God the ex- 
periences do not center about one single human 
organism, but may be inclusive of almost anything 
and everything we have ever experienced. When 
we thus contemplate the total Object of experience, 
we have the religious experience. 

But no matter which motive may dominate our 
cognition even though it be the contemplative, it 
is plain that there is a great waste of experience. 
For our power of taking in experience, in the sense 
of finding any interest or significance in it, is very 
limited. There is a vast dump heap of experience, 
mounting to infinity, which we completely ignore. 
The trivial, irrelevant, nonsensical, useless, acciden- 
tal, and meaningless elements of experience make a 
huge rubbish heap which constitutes the greater 


AND SCIENTIFIC METHOD 75 


part of this universe, if we may call the totality of 
experience a universe. ‘The significant, useful, ard 
interesting bits which we select constitute only tie 
tiniest structure in comparison. 

But are these trivial, uninteresting, insignificant, 
and useless elements of experience which throng in 
upon us all the time absolutely so? Of course not. 
They are trivial and uninteresting only because 
we have not discovered those relations in which 
they are important and interesting. We have not 
found that Object of contemplation in which they 
can be integrated. We have not gotten that slant 
or angle of approach from which their light be- 
comes apparent. ‘They are irrelevant only because 
our purpose is so narrow as to render them irrele- 
vant to it. “They are useless only because our en- 
terprise is not big enough to make use of them. 
Human life at its best might be described as the 
search for that total Object or bigger Fact in which 
all experience might be integrated and made to 
yield up its maximum significance. This search 
finds its culmination in religion. For this reason, 
also, it is plain that God is necessarily that Object, 
however unknown, which must bring human life 
to maximum abundance when man makes proper 
adjustment to Him. 

Now contemplation is precisely the thinking 
which is dominated by the motive to integrate ex- 
perience more widely and completely. Of course 
the actual amount of experience which humans 
have thus far been able to integrate and interpret 
as compared to the total mass of experience, is very 


76 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 


tiny indeed. But contemplation is the thinking 
that drives in that direction. It seeks to redeem 
the waste places. It is the endeavor to discover 
some system of integration which will draw into 
the object of concern more of that which other- 
wise is irrelevant and insignificant. It endeavors 
to find a method of fitting bits of experience to- 
gether so that more of the offscourings can be 
turned to use. The great religious quest is for that 
total Object which would render all experience sig- 
nificant and so bring human life to its highest pitch 
of enrichment and interest. 


CONTEMPLATION AND MYSTICISM 

Mysticism in its more extreme forms is not a 
knowing state at all. It is a form of immediate 
experience, while contemplation is a form of cog- 
nition. Contemplation is midway between mys- 
ticism—-where wealth of experience excludes cog- 
nition—and practice-theory, where cognition ex- 
cludes wealth of experience. In contemplation we 
have some well-defined beliefs concerning the ob- 
ject of experience. In mysticism beliefs and all 
forms of cognition fade away to the minimum and 
the mind resolves into a state approximating simple 
awareness. 

There are certain legitimate reasons why ex- 
ponents of religion have so frequently turned away 
from mysticism as the source and means to religious 
certainty. The chief of these has been failure. to 
make the very distinction we have just noted. The 
mystic experience has been identified with the 


— ~~ agi 


AND SCIENTIFIC METHOD 77 


truth; but the truth can only be the correct mean- 
ing of that experience and not the bare uninter- 
preted experience itself. 


There has been another difficulty. It has been 
confusion between the datum of the mystic experi- 
ence and the individual mystic’s personal reactions 
to that datum. In other words, we have failed to 
distinguish between the raw, uninterpreted datum 
of experience given in the mystic state and the 
visions, photisms, convulsions, involuntary vocal 
utterances, descriptive symbols, philosophical de- 
ductions, theological ejaculations, and other per- 
sonal idiosyncrasies which have characterized the 
individual undergoing that experience. All this 
confused mass of personal reaction and idiosyncrasy 
which has overgrown, and sometimes almost con- 
cealed, the original datum of experience, must be 
cleared away in order to give us access to the im- 
mediate experience itself. This overgrowth reveals 
the psychic constitution of the individual mystic 
rather than the object or meaning of his experience. 

Let us turn again to William James for descrip- 
tions of mystic experience as sources of insight. In 
his essay “‘On a Certain Blindness in Human Be- 
ings,’ taken from Talks to Teachers, we find record 
of these cases. 


Richard Jeffries has written a remarkable auto- 
biographical document entitled The Story of My 
Heart. It tells in many pages of the rapture with 
which in youth the sense of the life of nature 
filled him. “On a certain hilltop,’ he says, ‘‘I 
was utterly alone with the sun and the earth. 


78 


RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 


Lying down on the grass, I spoke in my soul to 
the earth, the sun, the air, and the distant sea, far 
beyond sight, . . . With all the intensity of feel- 
ing which exalted me, all the intense communion 
I held with the earth, the sun and sky, the stars 
hidden by the light, with the ocean—in no man- 
ner can the thrilling depth of these feelings be writ- 
ten—with these I played as if they were the keys 
of an instrumnt. ... The great sun, burning 
with light, the strong earth—dear earth—the 
warm sky, the pure air, the thought of ocean, the 
inexpressible beauty of all filled me with a rap- 
ture, an ecstasy, an inflatus. With this inflatus, 
too, I prayed. . . . The prayer, this soul-emo- 
tion, was in itself not for an object; it was a 
passion. I hid my face in the grass. I was 
wholly prostrated, I lost myself in the wrestle, I 
was rapt and carried away. . . . Had any shep- 
herd accidentally seen me lying on the turf he 
would only have thought I was resting a few 
minutes, I made no outward show. Who could 
have imagined the whirlwind of passion that was 
going on in me as I reclined there!” 

Surely, a worthless hour of life when measured 
by the usual standards of commercial value. Yet 
in what other kind of value can the preciousness 
of any hour, made precious by any standard con- 
sist, if it consist not in feelings of excited signifi- 
cance like these, engendered in some one, by what 
the hour contains? 

Yet so blind and dead does the clamour of our 
own practical interests make us to all other things 
that it seems almost as if it were necessary to be- 
come worthless as a practical being, if one is to 
hope to attain to any breadth of insight into the 


AND SCIENTIFIC METHOD 79 


impersonal world of worths as such, to have any 
perception of life’s meaning on a large objective 
scale. 


James quotes from Walt Whitman. Those of 
us who know him need only the mention of his 
name to recall how marvelous was the scope and 
vividness of his response to all the sights and sounds 
of the world. ‘The gates of his sensitivity were as 
wide open as ever were any man’s, it would seem, 
to all the concrete world. ‘Typical is a letter by 
Whitman, which James quotes. 


Dear Pete:—. . . . You know it is a never- 
ending amusement and study and recreation for 
me to ride a couple of hours on a pleasant after- 
noon on a Broadway stage in this way. You see 
everything as you pass, a sort of living endless 
panorama—shops and splendid buildings and 
great windows; on the broad sidewalks crowds of 
women richly dressed, continually passing, alto- 
gether different, superior in style and looks from 
any to be seen anywhere else—in fact, a perfect 
stream of people—men, too, dressed in high style 
and plenty of foreigners—and then in the streets 
the thick crowd of carriages, stages, carts, hotel 
and private coaches, and in fact all sorts of ve- 
hicles and many first-class teams, mile after mile, 
and the splendour of such a great street and so 
many tall, ornamental, noble buildings, many of 
them of white marble, and the gaiety and motion 
on every side; you will not wonder how much 
attraction all this is on a fine day to a great loafer 
like me, who enjoys so much seeing the busy world 
move by him and exhibiting itself for his amuse- 


80 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 


ment while he takes it easy and just looks on and 
observes. 


Further on James adds: 


When your ordinary Brooklynite or New 
Yorker, leading a life replete with too much 
luxury, or tired and careworn about his personal 
affairs, crosses the ferry or goes up Broadway, his 
fancy does not thus “‘soar away into the colors of 
the sunset’’ as did Whitman’s, nor does he in- 
wardly realize at all the indisputable fact that this 
world never did anywhere or at any time contain 
more of essential divinity, or of eternal meaning, 
than is embodied in the fields of vision over which 
his eyes so carelessly pass. ‘There is life; there, 
a step away, is death. ‘There is the only kind of 
beauty there ever was. . . . But to the jaded and 
unquickened eye it is all dead and common, pure 
vulgarism flatness and disgust. 

Life is always worth living, if one have such 
responsive sensibilities. But we of the highly 
educated classes (so-called) have most of us got 
far, far away from Nature. We are trained to 
seek the choice, the rare, the exquisite, exclusively, 
and to overlook the common. Weare stuffed with 
abstract conceptions and glib with verbalities and 
verbosities; and in the culture of these higher 
functions the peculiar sources of joy connected 
with our simpler functions often dry up, and we 
grow stone-blind and insensible to life’s more ele- 
mentary and general goods and joys. ... 

The savages and children of nature, to whom 
we deem ourselves so much superior, certainly are 
alive where we are often dead, along these lines, 
and, could they write as glibly as we do, they 


Ee 


AND SCIENTIFIC METHOD 81 


would read us impressive lectures on our impa- 
tience for improvement and on our blindness to 
the fundamental static goods of life. ‘“‘Ah! my 
brother,’ said a chieftain to his white guest, 
“thou wilt never know the happiness of both 
thinking of nothing and doing nothing. This, 
next to sleep, is the most enchanting of all things. 
‘Thus we were before our birth, and thus we shall 
be after death. Thy people... . when they 
have finished reaping one field, they begin to 
plough another; and, if the day were not enough, 
I have seen them plough by moonlight. What 
is their life to ours—the life that is as naught 
to them? Blind that they are, they lose it all! 
But we live in the present.” 


The intense interest that life can assume when 
brought down to the non-thinking level, the level 
of pure sensorial perception has been beautifully 
described by a man who can write, Mr. W. H. 
Hudson, in his volume, Idle Days in Patagonia. 


Not once nor twice nor thrice, but day after 
day I returned to this solitude, going to it in the 
morning as if to attend a festival, and leaving it 
only when hunger and thirst and the westering 
sun compelled me. And yet I had no object in 
going, no motive which could be put into words; 
for, although I carried a gun, there was nothing 
to shoot—the shooting was all left behind in the 
valley. . . . Sometimes I would pass a whole 
day without seeing one mammal, and perhaps not 
more than a dozen birds of any size. The 
weather at that time was cheerless, generally with 
a gray film of cloud spread over the sky, and a 


82 


RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 


bleak wind, often cold enough to make my 
bridle-hand numb. . . . At a slow pace, which 
would have seemed intolerable under other cir- 
cumstances, I would ride about for hours to- 
gether at a stretch. On arriving at a hill, I would 
slowly ride to its summit, and stand there to sur- 
vey the prospect. On every side it stretched away 
in great undulations, wild and irregular, How 
gray it all was! Hardly less so near at hand than 
on the haze-wrapped horizon where the hills were 
dim and the outline obscured by distance. De- 
scending from my outlook, I would take up my 
aimless wanderings again and visit other elevations 
to gaze on the same landscape from another point; 
and so on for hours. .. . 

In the state of mind I was in, thought had be- 
come impossible. My state was one of suspense 
and watchfulness; yet I had no expectation of 
meeting an adventure, and felt as free from ap- 
prehension as I feel now while sitting in a room 
in London. The state seemed familiar rather than 
strange, and accompanied by a strong feeling of 
elation; and I did not know that something 
had come between me and my intellect until I 
returned to my former self—to thinking and the 
old insipid existence (again). 

I had undoubtedly gone back; and that state 
of intense watchfulness or alertness, rather, with 
suspension of the higher intellectual faculties, rep- 
resented the mental state of the pure savage. He 
thinks little, reasons little, having a surer guide in 
his (mere sensory perceptions). He is in perfect 
harmony with nature, and is nearly on a level, 
mentally, with the wild animals he preys on, and 
which in their turn sometimes prey on him. 


—s 


AND SCIENTIFIC METHOD 83 


We believe these quotations set forth a very im- 
portant truth. But we believe there is also implied 
a grave error in the last quotation, and perhaps run- 
ning through the others. We do not believe it true 
that the savage and the lower animals are respon- 
sive to a greater number of stimuli than the civ- 
ilized man. It is not true that they are more alert 
to the fullness of sense data, necessarily, because of 
a “‘suspension of the higher faculties.’”’ As we have 
already said, when the higher intellectual faculties 
are suspended, we have something else in operation 
which may reduce the range of susceptibility even 
more narrowly, and that is routine habit. The sav- 
age and the lower animals are dominated by these 
habits (or instincts). “They may seem to respond 
to a wider range of stimuli, because they react to 
different stimuli, than we. “That which we ignore, 
they receive; but also much that we react to, they 
ignore. Hence the range is not necessarily wider. 

But apart from these possible faulty interpreta- 
tions and applications, the facts recounted in the 
quotations still stand. “There are times when men, 
with a partial suspension of the thought processes, 
become blissfully athrill with the vast fullness of 
sensuous experience that rains down upon them. 
As soon as they begin to ‘“‘think’’ the blinds are 
drawn down, the walls rise around them, and they 
cease to be alive with respect to all this fullness of 
the immediate world that encompasses them. All 
the world around them becomes dark and dead, as 
though it were not, save only that little streak 


84 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 


across the surface of things, which is illumined by 
thought, because it happens to be that which you 


“‘are thinking about.’’ All the rest is swallowed ~ 


up in darkness just as the waters at night over which 
your ship glides are illumined only in those streaks 
which waver across from the scattered lights upon 
the shore. So it is that thought closes the mind 
and draws narrow limits about that small portion 
of the world with which you converse. 

That kind of thinking which is most receptive 
to what mysticism has to offer is the contemplative. 
If mysticism ends with itself it amounts to little. 
Its value is that it opens up new undefined reaches 
of experienced reality. But if these new regions 
are not entered and possessed by thought, human 
life is not greatly enriched. Contemplation is best 
fitted to enter in and possess the land. The swing 
of the pendulum of interest from mysticism back 
to scientific method and from scientific method to 
mysticism, is of value only as it serves in each swing 
to build up a little more the breadth and fullness 
of that which we contemplate. And contempla- 
tion culminates in the discernment of God. Wor- 
ship at its best is that contemplation which is finely 
balanced between thinking and mysticism, and 
fulfills itself in action. 

Only by developing a scientific technique which 
is fit and able to interpret correctly the significance 
of that which is given in immediate experience, 
when immediate experience is at that floodtide called 
mysticism, can God be known. It is probable He 


he og" Me es nn 


AND SCIENTIFIC METHOD 85 


can never be completely known; but we can in- 
crease our knowledge of Him by contemplation, 
which draws on mysticism from the one side and 
scientific method from the other. 


CHAPTER GLY 
CHRISTIANITY AND LOVE 


h 


The contemplative way of life which we have 
been trying to describe includes, on the one hand, 
maximum appreciation and awareness of sensuous 
experience, and, on the other, the largest practical 
achievement and intellectual rigor. These two sides 
of life, the appreciative and the efficient, it unifies 
in such a way that each promotes the other. It is 
a dynamic, creative way of living. We call it con- 
templative because we have no other term to des- 
ignate it. We would prefer another term if we 
had one, because contemplation is so commonly 
associated with passivity. 

Now this way of life, which is both active and 
appreciative, intellectually accurate but at the same 
time receptive to the concrete fullness of sense, this 
way of life appears most completely in love. In- 
deed there is no other form known to man in which 
this contemplative life can be developed to such a 
high degree. Love yields the most full-orbed life 
precisely because it does bring about this unification 
of opposites and provides that delicate and difficult 
balance which we have been tracing throughout the 
foregoing chapters; in love at its best we find on 
the one hand that striving for knowledge freed of 

86 


AND SCIENTIFIC METHOD 87 


illusion which culminates in scientific method, and 
on the other hand that striving for fullest immedi- 
ate awareness of fact which culminates in mysti- 
cism. In love, then, we find reconciliation and 
unification of that which distinguishes science on 
the one hand and religion on the other. 

It may be scarcely correct to say that in love we 
find science, for science is a term used to refer to a 
mental attitude and method which must, when in 
actual operation, ignore that wide open awareness 
of experience which characterizes love, religion and 
aesthetic appreciation. But we can say that love 
unifies science and religion, the efficient and the ap- 
preciative, the abstract part and the concrete whole 
theory and belief, the verified proposition and sen- 
suous awareness, because in love the truths discov- 
ered by scientific method can be merged and bodied 
out by the rich awareness of immediate experience. 
And there is no other way of life in which this can 
be so completely and satisfactorily done as in the 
life of love. To make this clear we must clarify 
the concept of love. 

As an illustration of love at its best let us take 
the statement—that has fallen into our hands—of 
one who is surely a saint. We have authoritative 
information from those who know him well that 
what he here portrays is not a theory merely, but 
his own actual, constant way of life. It is his con- 
fession. He describes this way of love and religion 
in the third person, but he is speaking out of his 
own experience. Here we believe is to be found 
the scientific method merged with mysticism and 


88 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 


the two interacting creatively. Note particularly 
his statement that one must “lay himself open be- 
fore the richest heritage of the race, and counsel and 
criticism he will seek and weigh carefully. But at 
last it is to his own inner light that he must be true.”’ 


When it comes to guidance for the actual steps 
he must take each day, he will turn to the God 
within himself—that Love in every human heart 
which reaches out in a supreme concern for the 
good of all men alike and which will never fail to 
make itself known to any man whomsoever who 
will do two things: (1) go apart into a quiet place 
by himself and there relax all sense of strain and 
hurry, with the single purpose to listen for It: 
and (2) lay aside every desire or anxiety for him- 
self, waiting (if necessary for months or years) 
until he be entirely clear that the Voice or Intui- 
tion within him is no other than that Universal 
Love which ever waits each man’s surrender to It. 
In this experience he will find his anchor-hold on 
God. For him, thenceforward, there can be no 
unquestioning obedience to another’s commands 
nor submissive conformity to orthodoxy or con- 
vention. He will lay himself open before the 
richest spiritual heritage of the race, and counsel 
and criticism he will seek and weigh carefully. 
But at last it is to his own Inner Light that he 
must be true. Nowhere in the world is there a 
code of morals, or universal law of right and 
wrong, that can be applied to all alike. Every 
man’s law is within himself, waiting for his dis- 
covery of it. For each man it is different and yet 
for all alike it has the same meaning. It is that 


ee ee 


+s 


AND SCIENTIFIC METHOD 89 


of growth toward the perfect goodness of 
Godin ixe: 


His, then, are the freedom, the joy, the life, the 
wealth of the universe. Heaven is wherever God 
is. God is wherever love is. And if love wholly 
possesses a man now, for him Heaven is here— 
the ‘impossible’ utopia of the Community of 
Love has come. And nothing can take it away 
from him—neither poverty, nor prison, nor ‘‘fail- 
ure,” nor death. For he knows that there is no 
poverty for him who is rich within, nor prison 
for him who is free within, nor failure for him 
who will not bend the knee to wrong, nor death 
for him who has found the real Life. 


Here is Christianity in terms of love, and we 
know of no better terms in which to express it. But 
before we can adopt such terms we must distinguish 
clearly between genuine love and sentimental love. 
Sentimental love is blind. It feeds on illusion. It 
is a way of dreaming; it is not a way of cognizing. 
But genuine love is a manner of cognition. It is 
that type of cognition which in the previous chap- 
ter we described as the contemplative. 

Sentimental love is so common, not merely be- 
tween the sexes but in all human relations, that its 
blindness and illusions have been thought by many 
to be a characteristic of all love. Sentimental 
blindness is not an excellence but a fault, and while 
perhaps always present in human love to some de- 
gree, becomes less and less as human love becomes 
more excellent. Love is sentimental, blind and 


90 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 


false, just in so far as any characteristic of the 
beloved, whether a virtue or a fault, is ignored. 

Being blind to all faults in the loved one, sen- 
timental love cannot do any thing to correct faults. 
Neither can it do anything to strengthen the virtues 
of the beloved because it is blind to the facts and 
cannot discern the internal obstructions with which 
the beloved must struggle. Sentimental love merely 
luxuriates in its own dream of an abstract, perfect 
object which does not exist anywhere in reality 
and probably would not be lovable if it did exist. 
Sentimental love in this way is very selfish. It 
would be selfish even though the sentimental lover 
gave up his life for his dream. 

Sentimental love is so widespread and so com- 
monly glorified as the noblest kind of love that it 
is important to point out some of its greatest evils 
and negative qualities. : 

We have said that it is unfitted by its nature to 
help the beloved one attain his own largest happi- 
ness and fullest self-development. It is a millstone 
about his neck because it tends to fill him with an 
unjustified complacency and to blind him to the 
facts about himself and the world around him. To 
be blind in a rushing, whirling world of hard real- 
ities is exceedingly dangerous and in the end is 
bound to bring suffering. Sentimental love trans- 
mits its blindness to the one who is loved. It 
prevents him from struggling with those real diffi- 
culties by which alone he can attain an abundant 


life. 


AND SCIENTIFIC METHOD 91 


It is a form of unconscious hypocrisy on the part 
of the lover. He is deceiving himself and loving 
his own self-deceit. This self-deceit tends to spread 
out into other branches of his life. All reactions 
to the true individuality of the beloved are sup- 
pressed. ‘The lover uses his beloved very much as 
a little girl uses her old rag doll, as a bit of matter 
about which to build her fancies. But there is no 
evil in the little girl’s play because she has no estab- 
lished illusions concerning the reality of the rag doll. 
Or, if she does suffer some illusion, it does not tyr- 
ranize over her. She can easily escape it. And in 
any case the illusions of childhood are harmless or 
excusable as a process of growth. They are sloughed 
off with maturity. But in maturity one must put 
away childish things. In sentimental love one is 
not playing with a rag doll, which is inert and 
without feeling, but with a live, human person. 
And this make-believe is made to function in the 
grim process of actual living. On it is made to de- 
pend, unlike the play with rag dolls, the fortunes 
of self, the beloved and society. When one begins 
to construct a skyscraper on foundations of make- 
believe, danger is ahead. Sentimental love is not 
merely illusion, but illusion which is made to serve 
as foundation for real life-building. 

In sentimental love there is not community of 
mind. ‘There is no mutual understanding. There 
cannot be when one knows not a real person, but 
only a make-believe person with a corporeal object 
to serve as a rag doll symbol. Yet the glory and 
blessing of love is very largely just this blending and 


97 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 


interaction of visions by which arises a larger, fuller 
discernment of fact shared by both. 

Sentimental love is competitive, which means 
that the more we love one, the less we can love 
others. This follows naturally from its exclusive 
nature. The sentimental affection we give to one 
is subtracted from the world at large. “The energy 
and devotion we give to an unreal dream always 
diverts our energy and devotion from facts. Mod- 
ern psychology has made us well acquainted with 
these dream substitutes for actual living. Senti- 
mental love is an example of such a dream substitute 
and it has the same effect of diverting the energies 
from the real world and so from the real people 
that live there. We find mothers who love their 
children in this exclusive, competitive fashion. 
Other parents, on the other hand, find that affection 
for their own children quickens affection for all 
children because, when it is a real child that is loved 
and not merely a dream child, they find that the 
loved child is bound up with all other children. 
Any part of the actual world is bound up with other 
parts, hence genuine love for any part leads on to 
affection for other parts and the whole world, gen- 
erally speaking, becomes dearer through genuine 
love. In sentimental love the opposite of this is 
true. 

For the same reason sentimental love is non-pro- 
gressive. The dream does not lead on to more and 
more continuously, because it is not an integral part 
of the inexhaustible and organic totality of the 
world. ‘The dream soon reaches the limits of its 


AND SCIENTIFIC METHOD 95 


elaboration and turns back upon itself to revolve 
round and round in a narrow circle of fancy. In 
the course of time a dream wears itself threadbare. 

Sentimental love is rarely permanent because hu- 
man nature is prone to rebel in the course of time 
against continuous self-deceit and suppression of all 
reactions to fact. In association with the beloved 
his true qualities must inevitably be apprehended in 
part, howbeit subconsciously. Reactions to the real 
individual will be aroused but not admitted to con- 
sciousness. In the course of time these reactions 
may accumulate and form a system of response, 
which might be called a complex, which runs 
counter to the response which has the dream as its 
object. Thus arises an inner conflict in the lover 
between the suppressed complex of criticism or even 
repulsion, and the response of sentimental love. 
This conflict may manifest itself in many different 
ways. It may show itself in nervousness and de- 
pression which have no manifest causes. In extreme 
cases it may lead to mental aberration. These con- 
flicts due to sentimental love are one of the common 
sources of mental disorders. Or again, the conflict 
may show itself in alternations between honeyed 
endearments and violent quarrels. The suppressed 
criticisms break forth from time to time in bitter 
invective, then are suppressed and sentimental love 
again flows placidly on. Still again, the conflict 
shows itself in an undefined discontent. The lover 
cannot understand why he is not completely happy. 
He is restless and, quite unconsciously, may be on 
the lookout for some one else who will more 


94 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 


adequately embody the dream which for the pres- 
ent he has attached to the beloved. 

Sometimes the eruption of these suppressed crit- 
icisms from the subconscious is most dramatic. “The 
lover may be very fond for months or years or even 
the major part of a lifetime; the reactions of repul- 
sion may be constantly suppressed and unacknowl- 
edged even to himself during all this time, but they 
have been developing constantly, although subcon- 
sciously. Finally, after years of loving devotion, 
these suppressed repulsions break forth and dom- 
inate the personality of the lover. The yoke of a 
false love is thrown off. His life-long love ends in 
a moment, completely, because it was never genuine. 
Although this end of love may seem to himself and 
to others to come so suddenly, in reality his sup- 
pressed criticisms have been undermining his love 
for years. 

On the other hand, there are people who are able 
to love sentimentally all their lives and are never 
so devoted to their dreams as at the end of three 
score years and ten. “They are people who have 
succeeded in destroying their integrity quite com- 
pletely. They have become wholly unable to dis- 
tinguish between dream and reality. “They have 
succeeded in dissociating themselves into a sort of 
double personality, one constantly suppressed, the 
other dominant and active. They are arch-hyp- 
ocrites, beyond all hope of salvation. “They have 
succeeded in deceiving themselves so completely that 
they can never be made to suspect their own self- 
deceit. 


AND SCIENTIFIC METHOD 95 


So much for sentimentality. Let us now turn to 
genuine love, the sort of love which is the essence 
of Christianity. “This love, we have said, is a form 
of cognition. It is contemplative. It avails itself 
of all that science can reveal concerning the object 
of devotion, but it discerns in that object all that 
which science ignores. “That which is useless from 
the practical and theoretical standpoint is not use- 
less from the standpoint of love. All that practical 
and theoretical thinking can bring to light is seized 
upon by perfect love, because it reveals the true na- 
ture of the beloved so far as theory and practice can 
reveal. But love will not be confined to such narrow 
limits. 

‘Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.’ But 
who is this neighbor whom we should love as our- 
selves? Is he the foe of society, murderer, burglar, 
anarchist, capitalist, or whoever may be our pet type 
of enemy? Is he Dago, German, Wop, or Jap? 
Is he a social parasite, lolling, lewd and lazy, who 
has exploited the needs of his country and the poor 
of his land, a lily-handed epicure who is growing 
fat on the blood and toil and sweat of those who 
are ground beneath the wheels of war and in- 
dustry? Is he that one who holds a grudge against 
us because he thinks we have wronged him deeply, 
and watches us with malicious intent, waiting for 
the moment when we lie at his mercy that he may 
kick us while we are down? Or is he the man 
whom we ourselves watch with such malicious 2yes 
because of a wrong which we believe he had done 
to us? 


96 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 


Jesus has described this neighbour for us in par- 
ables and other teachings in such a way that we can 
recognize him wherever we meet him. The neigh- 
bor whom we are to love is anyone who embodies, 
however unconsciously to himself, however over- 
Said with prejudice and passion, however perverted 
and misconstrued, that uniquely human impulse 
toward more abundant life which can only find ful- 
fillment in the great community of love. Whoever 
is driven by a divine discontent that will not let 
him rest with any earthly good save only complete 
self-surrender to unbounded love, is my neighbor. 
Whoever is made for love and is restless till he gives 
up all for love, is my neighbor. Whoever is driven 
by the thrust of an impulse for fuller life into 
murder and robbery and cruelty and lust and van- 
ity and self-aggrandizement, exploitation of the 
weak, and violence toward the strong, he is my 
neighbor, because that impulse for a fuller life can 
find the scope and power it seeks only in the great 
community of love. This purpose of God in every 
man, this nature which is made for love and for 
nothing else, which blindly gropes and inartic- 
ulately strives, knowing not that it is only love 
which can give it the amplitude it seeks, this is what 
is holy in everyman. ‘This is the divine spark in 
him. ‘That he should be so made that he can never 
find peace until he goes and sells all that he has for 
love, this is what makes him lovable. And this is 
what makes him sinful. For sin is nothing else 
than missing the mark by failing to achieve that 
richest abundance of life which his nature craves. 


AND SCIENTIFIC METHOD 97 


What we love in our neighbor, when in the depths 
of his wickedness, is his need of love and his latent 
capacity to love. For his sin lies just in this that he 
has missed the way of love, and so gropes and 
stumbles and cries in the night, and flings about in 
desperation until he finds that way, or else is lost 
forever. 

There is nothing in the world worth doing save 
to show men the way of love. A day’s work or cup 
of cold water is not worth the doing or the giving 
if it be not given in the name of Love. To foster 
the flickering, faltering glow of love which is in. 
every man including ourselves, to feed it with truth 
and fan it with devotion, that is the only work that 
is humanly worth the doing. And if ever that 
spark springs into flame and flares aloft it will set 
the world ablaze and all the gates of hell cannot 
prevail against it. 

But if love be the whole end of living, the Chris- 
tian way of life, and the way which Jesus taught 
and lived, let us look a little more closely into its 
nature. 

To love a person means to react to him not only 
as he appears at the present moment, but as he was 
in the past and as he will be in the future and as 
he has shown himself to be in many different times 
and places. We love the total individuality, and 
that can reveal itself only throughout wide reaches 
of time and under many different circumstances. 
When we love, the past is with us, the future is with 
us, the events of many different times and places 
are with us. All this, of course, is not clearly in 


98 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 


our conscious minds, although some of it may linger 
at the fringes of consciousness. But it is all with us 
in the sense that our attitude toward the beloved is 
an attitude of recognition in him of characteristics 
which have been or will be displayed in various 
times and places, but which are not all manifest at 
the present moment. The confining barriers of 
immediate time and space flee away. A whole life 
becomes the immediate object of our concern. The 
present, for love, is not merely the passing second, 
or the passing quarter-second. It is not the passing 
hour nor day. The present, for love, is the total 
lifetime of the beloved, or as much of that life- 
time as the lover is able to comprehend. Perhaps 
only love at its best, which we may call perfect 
love, contemplates the total individuality as he has 
unfolded himself in the past and will in the future. 
But love, according to the measure of its excellence 
lifts us out of the thronging change of circum- 
stances into the wide still view of a total life. 
When the loved one is at the uttermost depths of 
shame, the lover sees him just as clearly and vividly 
as he was when he was most honorable, or as he 
will be when he attains the highest honor that is in 
store for him. For perfect love this honor is just 
as real and just as present as the shame. When the 
criminal comes home to his mother, if she has this 
high degree of love, she knows him not only as a 
criminal, but also as the infant which she held in 
her lap years ago. And this charm of his infancy 
is just as real and present with her now as is the 
shame of his crime. And more than that, the char- 


AND SCIENTIFIC METHOD 79 


acter which may develop out of this criminal in the 
future, is for her a part of the total fact of his in- 
dividuality. Love comprehends wide reaches of 
time, because love knows the individual in that full- 
ness of his nature which only wide reaches of time 
can reveal. Love discerns personality; that is, it 
finds the past operative in the present to shape the 
future. 

Because love can see in the worst that the loved 
one displays, the presence also of the best, love has 
great power to arouse this latent best and make it 
burgeon forth. There are two ways of attacking 
the evil in a person. One is the direct attack. It 
may consist of punishment or reprimand. ‘This is 
not love’s way. It may consist of drilling, instruc- 
tion, admonition, or some other corrective measure. 
The other way of dealing with the evil may be 
called the indirect. This is love’s way. It consists 
in turning away from the evil, as it were, and 
appealing to that latent nobility and excellence 
which is just as truly a part of the individual as the 
evil, howsoever dormant. It is only love that can 
make this appeal because it is only love that can 
see with sufficient clearness and vividness the living 
presence of this latent nobility. One can appeal to 
the general possibilities for good which, presump- 
tively, are resident in all mankind. In so far as all 
people are alike, having the same potentialities, this 
sort of appeal will do the work. But only with 
respect to very general and abstract features are all 
people alike. When it comes to the full rounded 
concrete good which may reside in every man, each 


100 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 


is unique. Only personal association can reveal 
this unique, concrete, total good which lives in each 
individual; and only in the personal group can one 
bring it forth most completely by his appeal of love. 
This appeal is generally a mute appeal. It consists 
in the lover letting the loved one know that he sees 
this good, and clings to him for it, and yearns over 
him for it. [The wordless, devoted constancy of 
love is itself the appeal. 

As the lover sees the best in the loved one when 
he is at the worst, so also the lover sees the worst 
in him when he is at the best. This is not true of 
sentimental love, and perhaps most human love has 
in it a touch of sentimentality. In so far as love is 
sentimental it is blind to the faults and, for that 
matter, even to the virtues, if they happen not to 
be pleasing to the lover. But love approaches per- 
fection only in so far as it is clear and complete 
in vision, discerning the weakness as well as the 
strength, the faults as well as the virtues. Hence 
in perfect love one will see the latent hidden evil, 
even when the loved one is displaying the noblest 
that isin him. Here again, of course, it is not nec- 
essarily a matter of conscious recognition. It is 
rather a mental attitude which is adapted to an 
individual in whom is evil as well as good. 

Now when we speak of a fault or an evil in an 
individual we are using language that is not al- 
together scientific. Any characteristic is faulty or 
evil only when judged by some particular standard. 
But what is condemned by one standard may be 
highly prized by another. By what standard does 


AND SCIENTIFIC METHOD 101 


the lover adjudge these traits or types of behavior 
to be faults and evils? Are not all our standards 
too narrow and abstract to take in all the diversity 
and significance of concrete individuals? And there 
is perhaps almost as much error as truth in our con- 
demnation and praise, especially when it comes to 
such a complex thing as human personality. Is it 
not the prerogative of love to divest itself of those 
rigid narrow standards and appreciate the fullness 
of the individual without pruning him down to 
these artificial and wholly inadequate standards? 
Our answer must certainly be in the affirmative. 
Love must not and cannot apply to the loved one 
those conventional abstractions by which we ordi- 
narily distinguish right and wrong. Nevertheless 
there is a standard by which love is able to dis- 
tinguish the good and the bad in the loved one, 
howbeit a very different standard than that of 
conventional morals. 

Let us endeavor to define love’s standard. It is 
the harmonious and unified individuality of the 
loved one. But we humans are rarely if ever com- 
pletely unified and harmonious within ourselves. 
We are almost always inwardly at war with our- 
selves, to some degree. What we would not, that 
we do; and what we would, that we do not. Now 
it is this inner conflict in the loved one which the 
lover seeks to correct. This is the fault in him, 
the evil, which love must strive to overcome by 
transforming the warring propensities into the 
harmony of a unified character. When the char- 
acter we display at one time is irreconcilable with 


102 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 


the character we display at another, love is grieved. 
The lover seeks for us the peace and power of a 
unified personality, that inner harmony which con- 
stitutes what may be called the true self. The 
moral standard of love cannot dispense with the 
help of scientific method. 

It is impossible that two conflicting characters in 
one person can both be good, because if one is good 
the other must be bad since it wars against the first. 
Both can be good only when they sustain one an- 
other or, at least, do not conflict. On the other 
hand, both may be bad in the sense that both must 
undergo modification before any harmony is pos- 
sible. If the lover values one, he must condemn 
the other, because it destroys the one. Or, if he 
values both, he must condemn the conflict which 
breaks down both. Or, if he values the conflict, 
he must condemn the rest of the personality which 
suffers from the conflict and seeks to escape from it. 

Here, then, is love's standard. It is the harmony 
and the complete development of the total individ- 
uality. In so far as the individual is at war with 
himself, and hence is destroying himself, the lover 
must endeavor to remove the inner conflict and save 
the total individual whom he loves. The fault or 
evil, which the lover sees in the loved one, is any 
trait which prevents this inner harmony or causes 
inner conflict. He who did not seek to correct in 
the beloved that which was doing him to death 
would be a false lover. 

Now this is the suffering of love—to love one 
who is destroying himself. This is the suffering of 


AND SCIENTIFIC METHOD 103 


atonement. It is this suffering of the lover which 
constitutes the mute appeal of love. Herein lies the 
transforming power of love. It is this which drives 
out inner conflict, transforms warring propensities, 
and reshapes them into harmony. This it does 
when it causes the beloved to turn against that in 
himself which causes such suffering in the lover. 
When the beloved sees that the lover has so iden- 
tified his good with the beloved that the latter, in 
pursuing his course, is destroying in himself that 
which is most precious to the lover, he may be 
moved to abandon such a course as he could not be 
induced to do in any other way. Above all, such 
love given to him may show him the way of love 
as nothing else could do; and the way of love, we 
have seen, is the only way of salvation and fulfill- 
ment to human nature. 

Let us see a little more clearly what is involved 
in that transformation of the individual which may 
be brought about through suffering love. 

A man who has committed a murder once, may 
do so again. “That murder has ploughed channels 
through his nervous system and mental habits. 
Furthermore, it has revealed in him a propensity 
which may lie latent throughout a lifetime, but 
which requires only the proper environmental con- 
ditions to stimulate it into action. And all the 
tenderness he may display after the event does not 
eradicate from his character that murderous trait, 
just so long as it is latent within him in the sense 
that it could be evoked again if the proper stimulus 
should be applied. But if he is transformed in that 


104 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 


particular, it means that the impulses of his nature 
are so reshaped and reorganized that no murderous 
impulse could again be aroused by any sort of 
situation whatsoever. 

If such a transformation should occur, then the 
past murder, together with the latent tendency to 
murder, ceases to be a part of one’s self. It is not 
the past of one’s new, transformed self. It is an 
event in one’s physical past, but not of his personal 
past. It is no longer a proper subject for grief, re- 
morse, repentance or regret. One grieves over his 
past only because his past shows what he truly is. 
It shows what is latent in him and can be elicited 
from him under proper stimulus. But when the 
physical past is no longer a part of one’s personal 
past, when it no longer shows what the latent im- 
pulses of one’s nature may be, because of the trans- 
formation of one’s nature, then it is foolish to 
grieve about it. One’s sin has been “‘washed away”’; 
he is no longer guilty. The past event is no more 
a part of his personal past than the murder of Julius 
Czsar, and should arouse in him no more sense 
of guilt or remorse than does that bit of Roman 
history. 

We see here the Christian doctrine of cleansing 
from all sin through the atoning sacrifice of divine 
love. It delivers from sin in so far as it causes one 
to turn in revulsion against the evil in his own na- 
ture because of the suffering which that evil causes 
one who shares it with him through that com- 
munity of interest which love involves. 

We have said that the lover reacts to the past and 


AND SCIENTIFIC METHOD 105 


future of the beloved as much as to the present; 
that, for the lover, the past and future are the un- 
veiling of the true and complete nature of the loved 
one. But when the nature has been so transformed 
that certain portions of the past no longer display 
what is latent in the nature of the loved one, then 
those portions of the past no longer enter into that 
total event constituting the individuality contem- 
plated by the lover when he loves. ‘These portions 
of the past belong to the total event of nature, to 
be sure, but not to that personal event which is the 
past operating in the present to shape the future 
and which is the beloved personality. So it is that 
the atonement of love sifts out that totality of past, 
present and future, which is loved, purging it of 
all that mars its beauty or fills with pain, leaving 
it altogether fair. 

There is a strange transmuting power in love by 
which physical pain and mental distress become 
precious to the lover and by him gladly welcomed. 
This must not be confused with that morbid state 
of mind in which people sometimes perversely seek 
pain. The morbid may seek pain because he thinks 
he thereby glorifies himself, or compensates for some 
wrong, or attains some excellence for himself; or 
some psychic knot may have twisted some impulse 
in such a way that it automatically plunges into 
pain somewhat as the moth plunges into the flame. 
Certain perverts seem to delight in pain because of 
a peculiar psychic bent that has been given to the 
impulses. But none of these are instances of love. 

Love’s transmutation of pain into blessedness 


106 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 


appears only when the pain is an experience by 
which I enter more deeply into the heart and mind 
of him whom I love. When pain is the gateway 
into his soul, it is joy. When all my experience, 
including physical pain and mental distress, becomes 
a form of community, it is that in which I delight. 
When I experience nature not merely as physical 
fact, but as physical fact which is experienced by 
another whom I love, then nature becomes glorified 
to me. If this hill is not only a hill, but the hill 
on which my beloved has trod, then I, in treading 
upon it likewise, am experiencing what my beloved 
experienced. I am sharing his life. If the mental 
anguish which assails me is that which my beloved 
has experienced, then I am entering into the deeper 
recesses of his mind and heart when I also ex- 
perience it. Prior to this experience there were re- 
gions of his life I could not enter. “There were 
things I could not understand. He opened the door 
to me, but I could not come all the way into his 
heart. I did not know the way. I had not the 
experience which would enable me to know and see 
and feel what he knew and saw and felt. But now 
I can enter in, even into the innermost sanctuary of 
his soul, because I: too have experienced. In this 
way the anguish, while not ceasing to be anguish, 
becomes also a joy. 

This is not to be confused with the adage: ‘‘Mis- 
ery loves company.”’ It is true that misery may be 
lightened by knowing that others are suffering also. 
But this has nothing necessarily to do with love, as 
shown by the fact that these persons need not be 


AND SCIENTIFIC METHOD 107 


peculiar objects of my affection in order to lighten 
my misery by their company. It is balm to one’s 
wounded pride to know that one is not the only 
person who must suffer. But there is a vast differ- 
ence between this, and the joy of community in 
which all experience, whether originally pleasant 
or unpleasant, is transmuted through love. 

Love passes its fingers over all the objects of the 
world and transfigures them. As king Midas by 
his touch could change all things into gold, so love 
by its magic can transmute all experiences into 
something blessed. 


Love is like the wind that passes 
Fingers through the leaves and grasses, 


There is a grace on all things that was not there 
before, because in all things I am experiencing the 
heart and mind of him whom I love. And to share 
his mind is my supreme joy. Surely goodness and 
mercy shall follow one all the days of his life if he 
loves any one in such fashion that all experience 
becomes a form of deepening community with him. 
If pain and anguish are among the most engrossing 
experiences, and if community in the most engross- 
ing experiences is the deepest and sweetest commu- 
nity, then it is out of the deepest pain and anguish 
that love rises most triumphantly and shows most 
gloriously its power to overcome the world with all 
its ills. Out of deepest suffering may blossom 
beauty and joy, if there be love. 

Some doctrines concerning the Cross are not 
without meaning in the light of this truth. Perhaps 


108 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 


the greatest message of Easter, and the deepest mean- 
ing of the doctrine of the Resurrection, is just this 
triumph of love over suffering and death. At any 
rate it becomes apparent how all things might work 
together for good unto one who had a Lover of 
such a nature that all experiences became a form of 
community with Him. There is no human love 
which can transmute all experience in this way. 
But great love does it more, and little love does it 
less: and we can assume that Perfect Love would 
do it completely. 

May not this transmuting power of love, and 
atonement through suffering love, be the true solu- 
tion of the problem of evil and sin in a world ruled 
by an almighty good God. ‘To enter into the love 
of God is not to abolish evil but to transmute it 
and triumph over it. And sin can be conquered 
only through suffering love. Is love, after all, the 
only way to triumph over sin and evil as, perhaps, 
God does eternally? And we can enter with Him 
at any time into His triumph not by might nor by 
power but simply by love. 

Thus love becomes the way of salvation and the 
meaning of religion. To be even one of the very 
littlest ones in the Kingdom of Heaven is to be un- 
conquerably blessed, for love transmutes all pain 
into sweetness and death into life and shame into 
good. To enter into the Christian Way of life is 
“to fall in love with the universe’ and to find that 
God Himself is love. To know God is to know 
love. In the Christian Way of life there may well 
be pain and death and shame, but they are trans- 


AND SCIENTIFIC METHOD 109 


muted. Pride, that suffers the gnawing tooth of 
envy, and wounded vanity, cannot live with love. 
The very least of these in the Kingdom of Heaven 
has overcome the world with all its ills. The 
mighty man must break at last but these little ones 
are dauntless eternally. One can meet them in 
obscure corners of the earth and it is good to look 
into their eyes. 

Professor Simkhovitch has sketched the historical 
conditions’ under which Jesus brought into the 
world the Christian way of love. The chief im- 
portance of this sketch for our present purposes is 
that it shows, we believe, the only conditions under 
which men can find this way of love. For it is an 
exceedingly difficult way to find although it is the 
only way in which human life can be delivered 
from all its physical and spiritual ills of pain, van- 
ity, disappointment, fear, futility, bitterness: and 
the only way in which it can enter into peace, 
power, fearlessness, and quenchless joy. For even 
the suffering of atonement has its joy; through the 
vast community of life which it offers, it gives that 
vision and power, that maximum abundance of life, 
which is the supreme satisfaction of human nature. 
But to find the conditions under which this most 
excellent way of life (which is as “‘rare as it is dif- 
ficult’) may be found and entered by men, let us 
turn to this sketch by Professor Simkhovitch. 

The Jewish people for centuries had been devel- 
oping a supreme hope and aspiration. It is not 
possible to experience to the utmost the distinctively 


1 Simkhovitch, Toward the Understanding of Jesus, Vol. V. 


110 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 


human ills of life, such as sense of defeat, bitterness, 
disappointment, futility, envy and other such forms 
of anguish, except as one is filled and moved by 
such hope and aspiration. The Jews had it. They 
were the chosen people of God. They had a su- 
preme mission to fulfill, They had a part to play 
in the life of all mankind which was to be of the 
greatest importance. Of this they were sure. And 
they knew that this great history-making work was 
bound up with their religion, their distinctive cul- 
ture, their way of life. But while filled with this 
great hope, they found themselves baffled and 
beaten. They were among the most mean and in- 
significant of peoples and never was this sense 
of their littleness and insignificance more clearly 
brought home to them than in these days before, 
and during, the life of Jesus when they were crushed 
under the mighty power of Rome. 

Finding themselves beaten and all their life and 
history about to come to nought, different ways of 
escape were sought by which they could save their 
hope and heritage, or at least escape complete 
destruction. 

Some gave up in despair and said: What's the 
use? Our hopes are dead. Our purposes are come to 
nought. Let us settle down and make the most of 
what is left. Let us eat, drink and be merry for 
tomorrow we die. Let us at any rate keep a whole 
skin and be as comfortable as we can. Let us seek 
the goods of this world and no more cherish the 
hope of fulfilling any lofty purpose in the world. 

There were others who sought a way out by 


AND SCIENTIFIC METHOD 111 


open and desperate rebellion. Rome was all power- 
ful. No earthly might could resist her. But these 
were the Zealots; they were ready to sacrifice every- 
thing in a last desperate fight—home, wife, child, 
limb, life—violence to the last, and then death. 
But perhaps God would intervene at last, before all 
was lost, if they endured to the end. 

Still again were the Sadducees, who took the op- 
posite course. “They would compromise and adapt 
themselves as best they could to the situation. They 
were the worldly wise. They would keep what 
they could of their culture and aspiration, but 
would also take over what seemed of value in the 
Hellenic civilization. They would adapt their Jew- 
ish hopes and aspirations to the world as they 
found it and win the prosperity and success which 
conditions offered. 

Jesus seems to have considered all three of these 
possible solutions of the problem. Such is the in- 
terpretation Professor Simkhovitch gives to the 
temptation in the wilderness. He could turn stones 
into bread. His people could give up their high 
historic hopes and live as comfortably as possible 
under the circumstances. He might minister to their 
bodily comforts and let the dream of an unfulfilled 
mission pass over. Or he might lead them with the 
Zealots in desperate revolt against Rome. Yes, he 
might dash himself down from the pinnacle of the 
temple. Such an undertaking was hopeless from 
the earthly standpoint, but God would intervene 
and the angels would bear him up lest he dash his 
foot against a stone. Or finally, he might appro- 


112 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 


priate the power and culture of the Hellenic civ- 
ilization of his time, keeping what could be merged 
with it of the Jewish culture. Accepting thus the 
kingdom and glory of the world he might bow 
down and worship Satan. But this course he also 
rejected. 

The course he finally adopted was closer to that 
of the Pharisees than to any other. The Pharisees 
would not resist the political power of Rome, but 
under this yoke they would cherish all their cus- 
toms and their religion with the utmost tenacity. 
Rome might wield her earthly power, but they 
would hold fast their spiritual heritage, their hopes, 
their culture, their ideals. If they kept these pure 
and undefiled, so they believed, the Messiah would 
come and deliver them from the foreign power. 

But their efforts were doomed to failure and this 
Jesus plainly saw. Under the Hellenizing influence 
of the Roman power their traditions were being 
gradually but inevitably contaminated. At best 
they were being reduced to little else than the ex- 
ternal forms and ceremonies. Like an ineradicable 
acid eating into their culture, the subtle influences 
of Hellenism were permeating their lives. They 
could keep the external forms, but the spirit would 
surely go unless they took the offensive. They 
could not merely stand fast and hold tight. Either 
they must permeate the world with their spirit or 
be permeated by it. “They did not resist with vio- 
lence, neither did they compromise, neither did they 
give up in despair their hope and heritage and con- 
tent themselves with mere animal existence. In all 


AND SCIENTIFIC METHOD 113 


this they went with Jesus and he with them. But 
there they stopped and he went on. While they 
did not resist their enemies save only hold fast to 
their traditions, they had bitterness in their hearts 
toward the conqueror. “They were crushed and 
baffled and beaten because they did not love their 
enemies. “They could not conquer Rome because 
they could not love enough. They could struggle 
against the alien influence, but they could not reach 
out and transform that alien influence, for only 
love could do that. 

So it was, in the fullness of time, that to a baffled 
and beaten, a desperate and despairing people, and 
himself one of them, Jesus brought his way of love. 
There is no way out, he said, but this. It is love. 
Love your enemies. Do good unto them that de- 
spitefully use you. Who were their enemies? Who 
were despitefully using them? No Jew could mis- 
understand the reference. The enemies of Israel 
and of every Israelite needed no further specifica- 
tion. They must turn the other cheek. They must 
love their neighbor even as themselves. And who 
was the neighbor? Not merely a fellow Jew, but 
an alien also—a Samaritan—could be neighbor to 
a Jew. In the world ye have tribulation, but be 
of good cheer, for I have overcome the world. And 
how overcome the world? By love. There is no 
other way to overcome it. By love shall ye con- 
quer, and by love alone. 

We have looked into the historical circumstances 
in which Jesus brought to men the way of love in 
order to point out what we believe to be the only 


Lis RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 


conditions under which men can be led into this 
Way. 

First of all there must be stirred up in men high 
hopes and aspiration. “They must be induced to 
seek that more abundant life, the seeking of which 
makes them more than beasts. “They must feel the 
urge of that discontent that drives them on to some- 
thing further. But this is only the first step. 

As long as men are successful and prosperous in 
their efforts to achieve what seems to them a more 
abundant life, they will not turn to love, for that 
is not the natural way. Of course all men are affec- 
tionate to some degree and toward some people. 
But they do not naturally seek to realize the com- 
munity of love. On the contrary, as long as the 
world favors them their ambitions will be compet- 
itive. They will measure their success and power, 
their fame and fortune by how much it overtops 
that of others. Therefore they must seek their good 
at the expense of others. “They must exercise a 
power which is not shared by others. They must 
possess goods in such way as to exclude ownership 
by others. They must have an honor which makes 
others appear less honorable in comparison. This 
is the natural way of seeking the more abundant 
life as long as success attends their efforts. 

Hence a third thing is necessary before they can 
find the way of love. “They must suffer defeat. 
They must feel themselves baffled and beaten. They 
will continue to pursue the natural way as long as 
that way is open. They will not cast about for 
another way until that way is blocked. Hence the 


AND SCIENTIFIC METHOD 115 


necessity for failure, or disaster of some kind, such 
as the Jews experienced. Such as Jesus himself ex- 
perienced and by which he opened up the more 
excellent way. 

But still a fourth thing is necessary. When men 
find themselves overcome and overwhelmed, they 
must not give up in despair. Neither must they 
turn to bitterness and envy, tenaciously holding to 
their aspirations, but filled with disappointment and 
jealousy, as were the Pharisees. Neither must they 
compromise, as did the Sadducees. All three of 
these ways are the common courses followed by 
men in the hour of defeat and failure. Neither must 
they turn desperately to violence as did the Zealots. 
But they must seek persistently to bring to fulfill- 
ment their high endeavor until they find the only 
way in which it can be fulfilled, and that is the way 
of love. 

When we consider all the obstacles that must be 
overcome, and all the devious ways that lead astray 
from that of love, and how difficult is the process 
which leads to it, a flood of light is thrown on the 
saying of Jesus: Wide is the gate and broad is the 
way, that leadeth to destruction, and many are they 
that enter in thereby. For narrow is the gate, and 
straitened the way, that leadeth unto life, and few 
are they that findit. This straight and narrow way 
is the way of love and few indeed are they who find 
it. But every other way leads to destruction. 

Now can men be brought into this way of love? 
They will not enter it or even note it until they 
find the natural way of competitive goods to be 


116 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 


blocked and impossible. Can nothing then be done 
until the hour of defeat and trouble? No, much 
can be done. Even in the hour of defeat men will 
not ordinarily find the way of love, but rather will 
turn to despair, or bitterness and envy, or violence, 
unless they have been taught of this way of love. 
But having been instructed concerning it, above all, 
having had it exemplified to them by the lives of 
others, it will come to their thoughts in the time of 
perplexity and they will turn and seek it out. Jesus 
himself had the teachings of Isaiah concerning the 
suffering servant, for Isaiah also lived and taught 
in an age of defeat and despair. We have the lives 
and teachings of many great lovers. And there is 
no great ministry to men save to augment this 
teaching and example of love in order that greater 
numbers will turn in the time of bewilderment to 
the only way that is open to the human race. 

When one looks out upon the human race, the 
way it has come and the way it must go, and sees 
that tiny gate so obscure that one must search to 
find it, and so lowly that one must stoop to enter 
it, and yet the only way to life, the only escape 
from ruin for mankind, one is sobered. One can- 
not hope that there will be continuous days of easy 
power and prosperity, for in such times men miss 
the way of love, and this automatically brings on 
destruction and the end of such comfortable periods. 
Civilizations will be transitory until men in large 
numbers go this way of love; and then that which 
shall arise will be so different from what we today 
call civilization as to require another name. 


PAR Tiel 
WHY SCIENCE NEEDS RELIGION 


117 


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COAP TV ERnV. 
THE TWO SIDES OF LIFE 


Scientific method and religious experience are the 
most extreme expressions of a duality that runs all 
through human living. All the way from the low- 
est biological level of the human up through the 
social to the highest spiritual achievements, we find 
the opposition of these two contrasting demands 
which human life makes. The contrast may be 
called roughly that of efficiency versus apprecia- 
tion; or that of adaptation versus creativity. 

At the biological level we find fixated habits, due 
partly to the innate disposition and partly to dis- 
cipline. “These stereotyped forms of behavior are 
generally adapted to certain features of the environ- 
ment. They generally operate with the minimum 
variation and with a high degree of codrdination 
and efficiency. But over against these habits or in- 
stincts, or combination of habit and instinct, human 
nature is endowed with a great capacity for the free 
play of impulses, impulses unconstrained by any 
established system of adaptive behavior. These free 
impulses represent initiative, change, adaptation to 
new and more diversified features of the environ- 
ment, and appreciation of richer and fuller fields of 
experience. 


119 


120 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 


Passing on to the level of society we find the same 
contrast between opposing sides of life. On the one 
side we find the codrdination of impersonal associa- 
tion, where each individual and each unit of be- 
havior fits like a cog in the great social mechanism; 
where each turns the other man’s mill but without 
mutual sympathy or understanding or community 
of purpose, without appreciation of one another’s 
experience nor stimulating interchange of thought 
nor integration of ideas. Over against this imper- 
sonal type of social organization is the personal in 
which there is mutual recognition of individuality, 
where there is provision for free and creative play 
of impulse on the part of each, and stimulus to such 
creativity and richness of experience because of mu- 
tual recognition and appreciation of individuality. 

Going on to the level of the intellectual and spir- 
itual history of man we find still again this counter- 
balance of opposing interests. On the one hand is 
the effort to reduce the world to mechanistic and 
materialistic terms, for it is only as we reduce a 
process to those terms that we can calculate and pre- 
dict results with accuracy, control with certainty 
and think through in clear and definite terms. No 
systems of thought have been so clear and definite 
as the materialistic. Materialism is the assumption 
that the universe is nothing else than those mutually 
exclusive elements that can be added, subtracted and 
generally treated as “‘equivalent.’’ But over against 
materialism and mechanism has stood the demand 
for spirit and purpose. And this latter has been 
no less insistent, undying and universal. 


AND SCIENTIFIC METHOD 171 


Let us be very clear that materialism and mech- 
anism, as well as spirit and purpose, are postulates 
or assumptions made in the interest of certain great 
aspirations of the human mind, the aspiration, 
namely, to predict, control and clearly define every- 
thing in the universe. We can never do justice to 
materialism and mechanism until we see that it is 
the expression of a great hope and a great effort, 
just as truly as the spiritual and teleological inter- 
pretations of the world. ‘The materialistic and the 
spiritualistic demands both represent at the high in- 
tellectual and spiritual level the two contrasting 
ways in which human life labors to uplift and mag- 
nify itself. One is just as brave and adventurous 
as the other. Both are ventures of faith. Great gain 
and loss is at stake on both sides. Under the banner 
of mechanism and materialism men have gone forth 
in the high faith that they could predict and con- 
trol the changes of nature and could formulate those 
imaginative, intellectual experiments by which sci- 
ence thinks its way throughout the universe. This 
has been a great enterprise and it would be sad in- 
deed if men were forced to give it up and pronounce 
the faith unfounded. But just as heroic is the en- 
terprise on the other side and just as much is at 
stake. Under the banner of spirit and purpose men 
have gone forth seeking in the universe that which 
is beautiful, that which can be loved and that which 
can be worshipped. Is beauty merely something 
that we attribute to nature, or is it resident there 
just as truly as the molecules or any sense object? 
And is there in the universe, as basic and far reach- 


ae RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 


ing as the elements of matter or energy, that which 
can be loved and adored? 

Nothing can be more pitiful than to see those 
marching under the one banner ridiculing those who 
uphold the other as though those others were vainly 
following an illusion, quixotic in their folly. As 
much faith is involved in the one as in the other. 
As great a good, perhaps, is at stake in the one ven- 
ture as in the other. We would even go farther 
and say that if the one cause is hopeless so is the 
other, for men cannot long continue either enter- 
prise without the help of the other. 

Hence arises the supreme problem: How to ad- 
just these two views, these two faiths, these two 
enterprises, in such fashion that they shall not ne- 
cessitate an either-or, but can be taken as both-and. 
They must be rendered mutually inclusive, no 
longer mutually exclusive. Can materialism be 
transformed into that concept of nature which pro- 
vides for accurate prediction and control but which 
does not exclude the quest for personality, beauty 
and love in the universe at large? And the concepts 
of personality, purpose and beauty be so shaped as 
not to exclude from nature the possibility of that 
which science requires to find there in order to do 
its work? The required adjustment between the 
two views of nature has been made frequently 
enough, to be sure, and many people think the 
problem is solved. But it has never been solved 
with complete satisfaction to both sides and prob- 
ably will not be solved finally for a long time. The 


AND SCIENTIFIC METHOD 123 


most we can hope is to move toward more adequate 
solutions. 

Here, then, are the two poles of living. On the 
one hand efficiency and adaptation, on the other 
appreciation and creativity. The development of 
disciplined habits stands over against the fostering 
of free impulse. The efficient codrdination of im- 
personal association contrasts with the creative 
self-expression of the personal group. Above all, 
that most rigorous constraint of impulse which we 
find in scientific method is opposed by that most 
complete expression of individuality which we 
find in love and religion. We have found a com- 
mon meeting place for these two sides of life in 
experience. We have found that they differ, in 
terms of experience, in that the latter is concerned 
with the most concrete fullness of experience while 
the former deals only with certain selected and re- 
fined data. Having stated the contrast in general 
terms let us go a little more carefully into the three 
levels of this contrast. 


THE BIOLOGY OF THE TWO DEMANDS 


In original human nature there are certain in- 
stincts or habit-forming propensities which are in- 
nate. Also innate are loosely organized or quite 
unorganized impulses. Perhaps it would be more 
accurate to say that while the first crop of impulses 
become established, in part, as habits, a new crop 
of impulses not yet so established is being ever 
anew quickened to activity. However we express 
it these two sides of life have their roots in the bio- 


124 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 


logical nature of man. New unorganized impulses 
do break forth over and above the established sys- 
tem of habits. It is these free impulses which make 
us responsive to the wealth of experience which lies 
beyond those special features which stimulate the 
instincts and established habits. In other words, 
these free impulses are what open our minds to the 
wealth of experience, just as the habits close our 
minds to all save a few features. 

How to adjust to one another an efficient system 
of habits, on the one hand, and the free play of 
impulses, on the other, is one of the serious prob- 
lems of human living. * John Dewey has devoted 
a book to the study of how to provide for free play 
of impulse in such a way that the established sys- 
tem of habits can be constantly modified and pro- 
gressively reorganized into an ever more complex 
system through assimilating such free impulses. 
Human life requires a pliable and progressive sys- 
tem of habits; but this is possible only when there 
are many new impulses springing forth to suggest 
new ways and to lead on to an ever richer life. 
The problem is twofold: (1) How to foster the 
free play of impulse while at the same time main- 
taining a disciplined system of efficient habits; (2) 
how to keep the two—habits and impulses—in 
fruitful and intimate connection with one another, 
so that impulse will prevent habit from becoming 
unchangeably fixated and habit will keep impulse 
focused on the actual problems of living. The 
second of these two is quite as important as the 


1 Human Nature and Social Conduct. 


AND SCIENTIFIC METHOD 125 


first and yet its importance is not so widely appre- 
ciated. 

This problem of how to promote and adjust dis- 
ciplined habit and free impulse is most commonly 
presented as the problem of how to promote and 
adjust work and play. Work is disciplined habit; 
play, or recreation, or leisure, is free impulse. 
There is wide recognition of the fact that human 
nature cannot dispense with either. Recent thought 
is most marked by increasing recognition and em- 
phasis on the value of play. Almost every one 
now sees the importance of developing capacity for 
both in every individual and providing opportun- 
ity for exercise of both. 

But everyone does not see that this is only half 
the problem. It is not enough that each individ- 
ual should give a certain portion of his time to the 
exercise of disciplined and efficient habits in some 
productive work, while another portion of his time 
is given over to freeimpulse. To keep the two sep- 
arated, neither influencing the other, is disastrous 
to both and to life generally. The chief value of 
free impulse is that it may make possible some 
larger measure of spontaneity, creativity, interest 
and joy in productive work. And the chief value 
of disciplined habit, over and above the production 
of necessary utilities for consumption, is that it will 
so direct free impulse that the latter will produce 
materials and conditions for its own progressive 
amplification. Free impulse wholly bereft of the 
guidance of disciplined habit, destroys itself. It 
gets nowhere; it becomes vapid and inane, like 


126 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 


blowing bubbles that flicker out as soon as pro- 
duced. Furthermore, it soon begins to consume 
more than it produces, unless checked. But worst 
of all, free impulse without guidance of disciplined 
habit falls into conflict, one impulse destroying the 
good of another. Free impulse becomes nothing 
but vanity and vexation of spirit when wholly sep- 
arated from disciplined habit; but disciplined habit 
becomes a horror of soul-killing routine when 
wholly separated from free impulse. 

The adjustment of habit and impulse most fre- 
quently made, because of the difficulty of the proper 
adjustment, is to separate the two. ‘“‘Work while 
you work and play while you play,”’ is the formula 
for this wholly unsatisfactory arrangement. L. P. 
Jacks, in recent issues of the “‘Hibbert Journal’ has 
been showing the futility and disastrous conse- 
quences of this division. He speaks of disciplined 
habit or work as “‘belly filling,’’ and free impulse 
or recreation as ‘‘soul saving.’’ [he modern world, 
especially since the introduction of machine indus- 
try, has been turning more and more to this water 
tight separation between work and play. Shorten 
the hours, increase the pay, devise a system where 
required production can be provided with mini- 
mum labor, and then, however dehumanizing the 
work may be, we can preserve our humanity by 
proper use of leisure, so the slogan runs. Give over 
the work hours, the shop, the industrial region, to 
the stupifying fulfillment of disciplined habit; but 
provide time and place and ample opportunity for 
play, where we can recompense ourselves for the 


AND SCIENTIFIC METHOD 127. 


hours of misery, or, what is much worse, the hours 
of contented stupor, by releasing free impulse in the 
form of pleasure. At best this free impulse in 
hours of leisure may take the form of art and wor- 
ship and pleasant social intercourse; at the worst, 
the gross and destructive forms. It is hoped that 
men and women living such divided lives can be 
“educated for leisure’’ so that they can find recrea- 
tion in wholesome or at least harmless forms. 

L. P. Jacks and many others have shown the 
impossibility of any such adjustment by separation. 
The bellies never have been and never will be filled 
by any such method, says Jacks, or can the souls 
be saved. Work in which there is none of the 
spontaneity and creativity of free impulse becomes 
uninteresting or positively miserable. But where 
work is not interesting it cannot be highly efficient. 
The worker will certainly produce less and less 
compared to his possible maximum. At the same 
time free impulse, altogether separated from work, 
inevitably becomes more and more wasteful, con- 
sumptive of ever more and more. So, with this 
separation, work must become less productive while 
play becomes ever extravagant increasingly. “The 
amount of utilities which an ordinary sophisticated 
man of today requires in order to “have a good 
time’ is mounting up to astounding proportions. 

But that is not all. When we turn away from 
work to hours of recreation for our enjoyment, for 
the interest and zest of life, the work will become 
more and more disagreeable to us. Precisely be- 
cause our minds and hearts are elsewhere, because 


128 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 


our dreams and hopes are elsewhere, because we 
take it for granted that work has no value for us 
except as a means to an end, because we do not try 
to put any free impulse and creativity into it, it 
must degenerate to lower and lower levels of spirit- 
ual degradation. ‘This gravitation of work to ever 
lower depths of hell is the inevitable outcome of 
any such arrangement. 

But the indictment still continues. As work 
becomes more stupifying and degrading, it destroys 
our capacity for enjoying our play. Some may 
think that the more disagreeable the work, the more 
enjoyable must be the play in contrast, but such is 
not the case. “To enjoy one’s self in hours of lei- 
sure is a very fine art and requires a finely equipped 
mind and body. But work of the sort we have 
been describing makes impossible any such finely 
equipped mind and body. Pleasure, as we see to- 
day, becomes more vain, superficial and unsatisfy- 
ing as work becomes more destructive of spiritual 
capacity. We may “educate for leisure’ with 
might and main, but we cannot offset the evil con- 
ditions of life by any purely academic process un- 
less the academic process is directed to the correcting 
of those evils. 

Finally, work which has not interest and enthu- 
siasm in it will become more and more the haunt 
of profiteering ghouls. If the mind and heart of 
the workers are not in the work, if they are not 
interested in its management, its improvement, its 
reorganization, they certainly will not protect it 
from evil management and from the exploitation 


AND SCIENTIFIC METHOD 129 


of those who will use it altogether for their own 
selfish ends. 

Now what has all this to do with science and 
religion? The connection may not be very appar- 
ent but is in fact very intimate and vital. The pro- 
motion and adjustment of the two sides of life we 
have been considering is the same identical prob- 
lem as that of how to promote and adjust science 
and religion. 

Science, both pure and applied, is the develop- 
ment and discipline of efficient habits, habits so 
shaped as to provide most effectively for biological 
adaptation to physical environment, for social 
coordination in industrial production as well as 
elsewhere, and for the control of natural processes 
and for accurately calculating results. Science is 
simply the extension of the old common-sense 
method of trial and error by which habits were dis- 
ciplined and shaped to the ends of most efficient 
adaptation to environment. “The method of trial 
and error tests the impulses when once they are 
awakened, but it does not awaken them. That the 
total situation must do, if it is done at all. Scien- 
tific method is not a method for awakening the free 
play of impulse. It is true that science cannot 
advance except as there is this spontaneity, for it is 
only by these novel impulses that new theories can 
be presented for scientific treatment, and new ways 
of doing things suggested for the experimental tests 
of scientific method. This is to repeat what we 
have stated all along, that science requires, for its 
own maintenance and progressive advancement, the 


130 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 


support of that which it cannot itself provide. 
Just as the disciplined habit of work requires to be 
impregnated, inspired and rejuvenated by free 
impulses, so must science be supported by them. 

But how can free impulses be aroused? How 
can all the chords of individuality be quickened to 
utmost spontaneity? How can all the capacity for 
response, which resides in human nature, over and 
above the established system of habits, be awak- 
ened? Let us be very clear that scientific method 
is not a method by which this is done. It is true 
science feeds on such free impulse. It lives by mak- 
ing use of the “happy thought,” the illuminating 
suggestion. But it is not itself devoted to bringing 
these novel hints to life. Its business is to put these 
suggestions to good use when once they are pro- 
vided. Its business is to test by experimental tech- 
nique, to adapt, to reshape, and fit these free im- 
pulses into such form that they will lead on to the 
solution of the problem. Scientific method can 
regulate, check, test, guide into profitable channels 
whatever new impulses may arise. But how can 
they be quickened into life? We shall see it is in 
religious experience the utmost capacity for free 
response is awakened. In religious awareness we 
become responsive to the fullest mass of concrete 
experience. It is then that we become exposed to 
the full impact of the totality that we have experi- 
enced. 

Now to say that religious experience more than 
anything else awakens free impulse, and that scien- 
tific method feeds on the novel suggestions of free 


AND SCIENTIFIC METHOD 131 


impulse, does not mean that the free impulses issu- 
ing from religious experience as we now find it can 
be put to any use by scientific method. On the 
contrary it is precisely because such is not the case 
that we have asserted all along that science and 
religion are in a bad state of maladjustment. Just 
as the free impulses generated in the sort of recrea- 
tion that now prevails cannot be turned to account 
in industrial production, or work generally, because 
work and play are not properly adjusted, so also 
in like manner science and religion are maladjusted. 
For science and religion are but the more extreme 
expressions of this contrast and counterbalance in 
life. 

But it is conceivable (and at times has actually 
occurred) that the spontaneous creativity of play, 
and the efficient adaptations of disciplined habit, 
have somewhat interfused and have served to guide, 
inspire and enrich one another. Such an adjust- 
ment also between science and religion is conceiv- 
able, and is more or less remotely approximated in 
some cases. But before any such ideal state of 
affairs could occur it would be necessary to readapt 
both science and religion. Religion would need to 
become respectful and receptive to the theories and 
conclusions of science. On the other hand science 
would need to change some of its basic assumptions 
as to the status of matter and the clearly defined 
objects of intellectual cognition as over against the 
total fact of experience. This change is under- 
Way, as we shall try to show in the next chapter. 
But even under the most perfect conceivable ad just- 


132 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 


ment between science and religion there would still 
be many impulses arising in religious experience 
which science could never turn to any use. This 
would be partly due to the necessary limitations of 
science; but it would also be due to the inevitable 
‘“‘wildness’’ or error involved in all free impulses 
of human nature, whether aroused in religious ex- 
perience or elsewhere. Religion needs the con- 
straint, guidance and tests of scientific method just 
as much as scientific method needs the freedom, 
spontaneity and creative impulsiveness of religious 
experience, 

But let us now go on to what we have called 
the social level of this same contrast between the 
opposing demands of human living. In fact we 
have already entered on the social level in our dis- 
cussion. It is impossible to treat human nature on 
the biological level alone. Human nature is largely 
a product of society. Both the disciplined habits 
and the free impulses of which we have been speak- 
ing are the products of society. The selective atten- 
tion of the instincts in the human is very crude and 
inefficient, and the course of procedure they initiate 
is ill-adapted even to the biological welfare of the 
individual. Thev. require much refinement and 
reshaping, and this is brought about by the lan- 
guage, the customary habits, the institutions, and 
the conventional attitudes of the society into which 
the individual is born. But above all, the instincts 
and free impulses must be shaped to meet the re- 
quirements of social codrdination in the particular 
social system that prevails where the individual is. 


AND SCIENTIFIC METHOD [53 


This is the work of social moulding. Now society 
may, and generally to some degree does, foster the 
development of both sides of life in the individual. 
It may stimulate the play of free impulse and pro- 
mote the organization of a system of disciplined 
habits. By means of wit, art, play, worship, by 
means of the intimate personal associations of the 
small group who can adapt themselves to the 
unique individuality of each, society may arouse 
initiative, originality, and the spontaneous play of 
impulsive personality. On the other hand, by 
means of the complex codrdinating system of the 
industrial plant, the state, school, church, and even 
at times the home, the individual may be moulded 
to fit like a cog in the social process. He may thus 
become a bundle of disciplined habits without spon- 
taneity or creativity of any kind. But generally, 
and perhaps to some degree always, society pro- 
motes the development of both sides of life. 

By turning to the study of society, then, we 
mean turning to consideration of these contrasting 
types of social organization which foster, respec- 
tively, these two sides of our nature. 


THE SOCIOLOGY OF THE TWO SIDES 


The sort of social grouping which fosters free 
impulse, appreciation and creativity we shall call 
the personal group. That which promotes discip- 
lined habit and efficient codrdination rather than 
creative integration, we shall call the impersonal. 
These two types of social organization may be 
contrasted with one another on four counts. 


134 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 


1, In the personal group the individual responds 
to what may be called the total personality of the 
other members. By that we mean that each mem- 
ber adapts himself to the thoughts, sentiments, pur- 
poses and needs of the other members. Each re- 
gards the other as a unique individual to whom he 
adjusts himself in a special way. Each under- 
stands the other. Any association of friends would 
represent such a group. Such group life, to reach 
its maximum, requires two things: First, that the 
complete individuality of each be evoked; second, 
that each adapt himself to, and appreciate, the 
complete individuality of every other. 

In the impersonal group, on the other hand, 
there is no such recognition of individuality nor is 
individuality evoked. Each may respond to some 
ac. on the part of the other just as one would 
respond to some physical object or mechanical sig- 
nal; each may respond to some function of the 
other; or it may be merely the spatial position of 
the other to which one adapts himself. In any 
case it is not the unique individual purpose, not the 
shades of feeling, in the other which one recog- 
nizes; it is not the more comprehensive thought of 
the other that one appreciates. The Bell telephone 
system is an example of an impersonal group of 
which we are all members if we use the telephones. 
The bank in which we have money deposited is 
one of the impersonal groups, including all the 
other depositors and borrowers as well as the offi- 
cials. Our life insurance company is another im- 
personal group, including all the other policy 


AND SCIENTIFIC METHOD 1o5 


holders and the officials as well as the investors of 
the deposited funds. 

2. The second point of difference between these 
groups lies in the degree to which the complete in- 
dividuality is evoked in each. ‘This has already 
been mentioned in connection with the first differ- 
ence mentioned, but is worthy of consideration by 
itself. In the personal group we not only respond 
to the complete individuality of the others, but our 
own total personality, approximately, is stirred in 
the response. Of course this is a matter of degree, 
for groups are more or less personal. It is in love 
and worship that this total response of the indi- 
vidual reaches its maximum. But a distinctive fea- 
ture of the personal group is that more of the 
habits, sentiments, and impulses of the individual 
are simultaneously aroused than is the case in the 
impersonal. In the association of friends and in 
the discussion group we undergo that stimulation 
of all our tendencies, which appears in conscious- 
ness either in the form of deep, pervasive emotion 
or else as mental activity, wide, varied, rapid, and 
spontaneous. 

In the impersonal group, on the other hand, 
emotion is at the minimum and mental activity, 
although at times it may be very strenuous, is 
effortful rather than spontaneous, instrumental 
rather than creative, exercised as a means rather 
than as being in itself satisfying. All response in 
the impersonal group tends to assume the form of 
the minor units of behavior which operate auto- 
matically. Motorists on a congested street corner 


136 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 


constitute such a group. Each responds to the sig- 
nals of the road in an automatic fashion. When 
the man in front of me holds out his hand, indicat- 
ing that he intends to turn to the right, I adapt my 
conduct to his with scarcely any emotion or 
thought upon the matter. In the bank I sign my 
name to the check, thus responding to the require- 
ments of the group. But only a very few of the 
tendencies constituting my personality are involved 
in the act. In the polite society of the ball room 
or reception hall my conduct becomes an unemo- 
tional, unthinking, mechanical fulfillment of the 
rules of etiquette, just in so far as the group is an 
impersonal one. But the moment I meet there an 
old friend, my response is transformed. My con- 
duct ceases to be a matter of a few reflexes and 
comes to involve all those tendencies that make up 
the deeper sentiments and more comprehensive pur- 
poses of life. 

3. The third point of distinction between these 
groups lies in the plasticity and rigidity of their, 
respective types of social order. The order of the 
personal group is highly plastic; that of the im- 
personal is rigid. The order of the personal group 
is constantly shaped and reshaped by the changing 
moods and needs and purposes of its members, be- 
cause its system of organization is nothing else than 
the mutual adaptation of its several members to the 
needs and purposes of each. It adapts itself to 
every personality that comes into it, just as the per- 
sonality reciprocally adapts himself to the group. 
Thus it is in the personal group that one finds max- 


AND SCIENTIFIC METHOD 437 


imum social freedom, if by that one means to be 
free with other people. But if one means to be 
free from others, free from the need of considering 
their wishes or their personalities, then of course 
he has it in the impersonal system. But this is more 
a negative freedom, while the personal group pro- 
vides a positive freedom. 

The order of the impersonal group, we have 
said, manifests rigidity. Its order is prescribed by 
rules and regulations. It is not maintained by mu- 
tual adaptation of persons directly to one another, 
but rather by adaptation of each person to the reg- 
ulations or code that is enforced. “This code may 
be designed and imposed by some dominating in- 
dividual, or by mutual agreement. It may con- 
sist of written constitution and statute law, or it 
may be the product of accumulating tradition. 
The greater part is generally the latter. But in 
any case it constitutes a framework into which each 
member of the group must fit himself, and in so 
doing his activities are automatically codrdinated 
with those of other members of the group. The 
members of an industrial plant, for instance, may 
act in such a way as to constitute a beautifully 
coordinated system. This system, however, does 
not arise out of any mutual consideration for one 
another on the part of the workers. It arises out 
of the mechanism of regulations by which their 
activities are coordinated. 

4. The fourth point of contrast is in respect to 
the permanence or change of the personnel of the 
two groups, respectively. The personnel of the 


138 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 


personal group is constantly changing. The em- 
ployees of the industrial plant come and go, but 
the members of the home continue their relations 
to one another throughout a lifetime. The politi- 
cal order may seem to be an exception to this, for 
it may be quite impersonal and yet its personnel is 
fairly permanent. This, however, is due to the 
peculiar position of the political order relative to 
the other groups. It is supervisory over all other 
groups, and hence, wherever we go we are always 
either actually or potentially under its control. 
However, it should be borne in mind that the po- 
litical order is usually less impersonal than the in- 
dustrial. 

It should be noted that actual social groups are 
rarely if ever purely personal or purely impersonal. 
Actual groups are generally a mixture of these two 
types. But it is possible to call a group personal 
or impersonal according to the predominance in it 
of one or the other of these two types. 

Also it is apparent that in these two groups we 
have the social aspect of the contrast we have been 
considering in human life between habit and im- 
pulse. In so far as we react to others according to 
established and automatic habits, our social rela- 
tion with them is impersonal. In so far as these 
habits are modified by new impulses quickened by 
the uniqueness of the other and of the total situa- 
tion, our relations are personal. The problem 
here as always is not merely to keep the two types 
of association from interfering, but to connect them 
in such a way as to support one another. We can- 


AND SCIENTIFIC METHOD 139 


not have profitable personal intercourse without a 
basis and framework of habit which constitutes 
impersonal relations. Love at its best, where the 
whole personality is deeply responsive, requires a 
finely standardized system of habits, disciplined and 
adapted, yet plastic, suffused and supplemented by 
free impulse. Lovers like Jesus and John, or Plato 
and Socrates, or Ruth and Naomi, cannot dispense 
with the standardized system of traditions and reg- 
ulations of their day; but they cannot be satisfied 
with these alone nor accept them without modifica- 
tion. Personal association must draw upon all that 
the impersonal can supply of routine and method, 
but add to it the warmth and delicacy and new 
creations of impulse. And impersonal association 
must not only draw upon the personal for plastic- 
ity and adaptation to novel situations and to the 
unique requirements of individuals, but connect 
this with the historic achievements of the race so 
that the social interaction can be borne up by the 
labors and wisdom of thousands who have lived, 
and also provide that it may contribute something 
to the heritage of thousands yet to live. But this 
adjustment of the personal and impersonal, making 
possible such mutual enrichment, is rarely if ever 
perfect. Often the two hinder and destroy one 
another. 

But our thesis is that these two types of social 
interaction are indispensable to one another. Each 
contributes something which is necessary to human 
life. The personal provides social freedom. The 
impersonal provides discipline which is requisite in 


140 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 


order to stabilize human purpose and bring human 
endeavor into effective action upon stubborn obsta- 
cles. Especially is it needed to bring about a sum- 
mation of a great number of individual efforts 
upon a common enterprise. 

While the personal group engenders progressive 
evolution of purpose through the quickening of 
new impulses, the impersonal provides that mech- 
anism of achievement by which such purposes can 
be executed and so provide conditions and materials 
for a still larger purpose. 

It is the personal group which causes the individ- 
ual to enter into response to an ever greater num- 
ber and diversity of qualities in the world around 
him. It ushers him into a more concrete world. 
In the personal group we teach one another to ap- 
preciate color and sound and delicate shades of dif- 
ference and all that massive fullness of fact which 
the impersonal group, in the interests of efficiency, 
must ignore. In engenders delicacy of response 
and depth of emotion. But it is the impersonal 
that provides the interlocking chain of consequences 
and that wide field of endeavor by which the efforts 
of the individual are transmitted and magnified to 
the utmost. With its wide-reaching systems of 
coordination and its indestructible institutions, it 
gives world-wide significance and historic efficacy 
to the work of the individual. 

The fertility of the historic social process, out 
of which has arisen the arts and sciences, is due to 
the marriage of these two types of association. 
When one operates in such a way as to impair or 


AND SCIENTIFIC METHOD 141 


destroy the other, both must suffer and human life 
is impoverished. Our persistent problem is how 
to adjust them that each shall sustain and magnify 
the other, instead of thwarting the other, as is all 
too frequently the case. Since the industrial revo- 
luion, for instance, we have seen the impersonal 
driving out the personal. But of late a strong 
movement has set in to counteract and correct this 
one-sided development. The danger is that we 
shall set the two over against one another and to 
the exclusion of one another. 

Here again is the problem of science and religion. 
The organization of impersonal groups is ulti- 
mately a matter of science. Heretofore they have 
been largely shaped by tradition and common 
sense; but in the fields of industry and government 
we see science gradually supplanting tradition and 
the rough rules of practical experience. “The tran- 
sition is necessarily very gradual but it is on the 
way. We have the beginnings of a political science. 
There is a most efficient method of governmental 
administration and political action which science 
must devise and which is even now in its begin- 
ning. There is a most efficient method of indus- 
trial production which science alone can discover 
and set forth. This achievement of science is also 
under way. We have our engineers of production, 
engineers of organization for personnel as well as 
for machines, materials and finance. One needs 
only mention, for example, the so-called ‘“Taylor 
system’’ to suggest the work of science in this field. 
Impersonal association plainly belongs to the side 


T4Z RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 


of science and is gradually becoming identified with 
science. 

But just as truly personal association belongs to 
the side of religion, the complete individuality can 
be evoked only through religious experience. This 
follows necessarily from our definition of religious 
experience. There are of course religious tradi- 
tions and ecclesiastical systems which iron out in- 
dividuality. But religious experience as such does 
just the opposite. Nowhere do we find such 
unique, powerful and fully aroused personalities as 
in cases of vital religion. Great religious leaders 
have often stood up against mighty institutions, 
literatures, and all the machinery of the impersonal 
order and by sheer force of the personal association 
of others with themselves have turned the stream 
of history into another channel. This they have 
done without making any use of the written word, 
for it is less personal than the spoken; without 
using the institutions or any impersonal mechanics 
of society. “The origin of Christianity is, of course, 
the outstanding example of this. But it was not 
only the personality of Jesus that towered so high. 
Humble obscure men, when touched with the 
dynamic of this great religious experience, were 
turned into giants of individuality. The total 
capacity for response, latent in the unique individ- 
uality of each, was aroused. 

And as religion evokes individuality, thus pro- 
viding the first requirement of personal association, 
it also, in its Christian form at least, brings to the 
highest level that love which is the second essential. 


AND SCIENTIFIC METHOD 143 


Love can reach its maximum only when God is 
known as love. It can attain that quantity and 
quality required for the greatest personal associa- 
tion only when it finds its nourishment and stim- 
ulus in the spirit of the universe. 

There is no science of friendship and there is no 
hint that there ever will be, for personal association 
can never be a matter of standardized rules and reg- 
ulations. It can never have that uniformity which 
science requires. Personal behavior can never be 
wholly predictible and its units never “‘equivalent.”’ 
There is certainly a scientific adjustment of imper- 
sonal organization which is favorable to love and 
mutual understanding, as there is another that is 
inimical. Much work is now being done in the 
field of industrial organization and elsewhere to 
provide for personal relations and creative interest. 
This is auspicious. But the actual personal inter- 
course and the free play of impulses can never be 
a matter of system and regulations. Spontaneity, 
creativity, and mutual appreciation, can never be 
manufactured by scientific method. The fountain 
of self-expression and novel impulse generated in 
free personal association may very well be poured 
into the hopper of scientific method and be trans- 
formed into useful and efficient forms of social be- 
havior. ‘That would be an ideal adjustment. 

Religion can be propagated effectively from man 
to man and group to group only through personal 
association. Jesus sought above all else to have per- 
sonal relations, and formed a small group about 
himself for that purpose. All his teachings con- 


tA RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 


cerning social relations glorify the personal group. 
The early Christians were intensely personal in 
their relations to one another. The Christian 
church at its best always seeks to cultivate personal 
association. There is nothing more deeply per- 
sonal than for several individuals to share a com- 
mon religious experience. Christian love is per- 
sonal association at its fullest. 

It is plain that in personal and impersonal asso- 
ciation we have these two sides of life that head up 
in science and religion. 

Let us now turn to what we have called the 
third level of this contrast. One might almost call 
this the two metaphysical demands. There is a 
history of man’s intellectual struggle for clarity 
and definiteness of concepts in thinking his world, 
in controlling and predicting its processes. There 
is also a parallel struggle for recognition and appre- 
ciation of spirit and purpose throughout the world. 
We want to glance at this twofold endeavor for 
scientific precision and spiritual significance, 


THE TWO METAPHYSICAL DEMANDS 


From time immemorial the process of trial and 
error practiced by common sense has been carving 
out from the massive world of experience an 
orderly and manageable little world of practice and 
theory. The work of one generation has been 
handed on to the next by means of words and con- 
ventional attitudes, formulas, habits, traditions, 
and institutions. Finally scientific method enters 
in to put on the final touches to this tight little 


AND SCIENTIFIC METHOD 145 


world of neat and controllable objects, which 
common sense has so laboriously developed 
throughout successive generations. 


We are presented in sense experience with some- 
thing large and vague and chaotic, and we sophis- 
ticate and conventionalize until we have made 
something neat and definite and of manageable 
proportions stand out from the bewildering 
background of experience. “The process of trial 
and error is not so simple and straightforward as 
it appears, and a vast amount of unseen work has 
to be done before there emerges the world of 
familiar things which we suppose we live in, but 
which is a theoretical construction from what is 
actually presented to our senses. The man of 
science and his common-sense forerunners brush 
aside a vast number of perplexing problems when 
they decide to disregard metaphysics and go 
straight to work on particular parts of the physi- 
cal world.? 


But the man of science and his common-sense 
forerunners never do get rid of metaphysics and 
never can. Ritchie immediately adds in the next 
sentence: ‘‘But their concept of the physical world 
is already saturated with metaphysics, and meta- 
physics of the most dangerous kind, unconscious 
metaphysics inherited from our forebears or worked 
out in extreme youth. Lurking in the background 
of any description of what we see and touch and 
hear is some theory and some assumption as to the 


2 Ritchie, A. D., Scientific Method, p. 6. 


146 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 


nature of things. The scientific man’s escape from 
metaphysics is largely illusory.’’* 

The Greeks began this work of definition, clari- 
fication, and exclusion so far as science builds on 
common sense. With the close of the Middle Ages 
science developed the experimental method to a 
degree the Greeks had never been able to do and 
by means of it we have been able to define, predict 
and control with an accuracy and range which the 
Greeks could never approach. And it would seem 
that science has only begun its great work of con- 
structing a world to suit its purposes out of the 
mass of immediate experience. So we find our- 
selves today in a world more clear, predictable and 
controllable than ever before. Now this world, 
with the concepts by which we think it and the 
attitudes we assume toward it, inevitably implies, 
as Ritchie says, a metaphysics, whether we con- 
sciously recognize it or not. 


This scientifically constructed world in which 
we live, scientifically controlled, defined and pre- 
dictable, carved out of the chaos and massiveness 
of experience and made to stand forth like a hard 
little jewel from the mists and shadows and stream- 
ing mysteries of immediate experience, is not an 
unreal world. If we say it is constructed, if we 
call it artificial, we do not mean to imply that it 
is fictitious in the ordinary sense of fiction as being 
a construction of fancy. This hard and definite 
little world of science and common sense is just as 
much fact, as far as it goes, as the total fact from 


8 ibid. 


AND SCIENTIFIC METHOD 147 


~- 


which it is distinguished by means of concepts 
specially constructed for this purpose. This world 
of practice and theory stands in the midst of total 
fact somewhat as a cubic foot of air stands in the 
midst of an open space of streaming winds and 
mists. ‘This cubic foot of air certainly exists. As 
a mathematician computing the amount of air in 
this space I may deal with such cubic feet and noth- 
ing else. My attitude and concepts may imply that 
these cubic feet are the sole and total fact; but of 
course they are not. Furthermore we cannot say 
that nature has set apart these cubic feet as of pecul- 
iar significance; she has not enclosed with natural 
partitions nor in any wise given them prominence. 
It is scientific method that gives them unique sig- 
nificance and makes them shine forth with unnatu- 
ral light. Only in this sense is the world that con- 
cerns science artificial. It is unnatural because it 
gives a prominence which nature does not give to 
certain features, and deals with certain portions of 
total fact as though they were the whole when 
they are but a very small part. It is in this sense 
that the world of practice and theory, of common 
sense and science, is a ‘‘theoretical construction.” 

This scientifically defined world is inimical to 
beauty, love and worship only on two conditions: 
First, if we fail to see that it is but a part, and a 
very small part at that, of the total fact of experi- 
ence: and, second, if we assume that it is more im- 
portant and worthy of consideration (except for 
scientific purposes) than the rest of that which we 
experience. We must see that over and above these 


148 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 


conceptually defined molecules and atoms and vi- 
brations, and round them and through them, there 
flows that total event of nature which enters aware- 
ness in the form of the concrete fullness of experi- 
ence. We must see that this streaming flood of fact 
is not of necessity any less significant or worthy 
than those features selected for scientific treatment. 

But the worst evil arises when we separate these 
two parts of total fact and, in our effort to do jus- 
tice to both, treat them as independent worlds. 
All too frequently we have considered that experi- 
ence which is aesthetically appreciated, loved and 
worshipped as constituting a wholly different 
world from that which is scientifically defined, con- 
trolled and predicted. It is this opposition between 
what some have been pleased to call the realm of 
values and the realm of facts that we wish to des- 
ignate by the two metaphysical demands. Our 
conviction is that there are no two such realms or 
worlds outside our own fancies. “The two are one. 
If the humpty dumpty of total fact were indeed 
broken in two we could never get him together 
again. But the great fall and break has never 
occurred except in the form of a nightmare which 
we have dreamed,,and are now unable to put out 
of our minds. 

We demand love and beauty and worship; and 
we also demand prediction, intellectual clarity and 
efficient control. “Those who construct their meta- 
physics with only the religious interest in view, or 
only the scientific, in either case do great damage 
and are equally far from the truth. For these con- 


* 


AND SCIENTIFIC METHOD bay 


trasting demands of life are equally valid; both are 
derived directly from experience; both refer to in- 
dubitable data; both are rooted in human nature; 
and both rear their constructions in faith and aspir- 
ation. An adequate view of the universe can be 
attained only by learning from both and giving 
equal consideration to both. 

Since science and religion are both derived from 
immediate experience, their metaphysical assump- 
tions cannot be inconsistent if rightly formulated. 
But of course it is exceedingly difficult to rightly 
formulate them. To the degree that they are in- 
consistent we know that they are not altogether 
correct; and there generally is some inconsistency 
between them, which only means that we have 
never yet developed a perfectly correct metaphysics 
and probably will not yet for a long time. Mere 
consistency between them would not prove them 
correct; but inconsistency proves them wrong. 
The development of a correct metaphysics must be 
the work of many generations yet to come as it has 
been the work of many that are gone. It is not 
an impossible task; it can be advanced from age 
to age. But it is one of those tasks which may be 
still incomplete when human history is done. To 
have a share in it is no mean thing. 

Just now the work of metaphysics requires a 
reconstruction of the basic concepts of science on- 
the one hand and of religion on the other. This 
work of reconstruction must be done chiefly by 
specialists in the two respective fields. After they 
have done their work the philosopher may exam- 


150 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 


ine these concepts in relation to one another to see 
wherein they are inconsistent or consistent and 
point out what further work awaits to be done. 
He may himself contribute something to their mu- 
tual modification, with the view to attaining con- 
sistency. 

The basic concepts underlying the appreciative 
side of life and requiring modification, are those of 
purpose, personality and beauty. They are at the 
present time undergoing development as are also 
the underlying concepts of science. We shall try 
to trace some of this reconstruction and rapproche- 
ment in the chief ideas that underly these two 
interests, 


METAPHYSICAL RECONSTRUCTION AND 
RAPPROCHEMENT 


This movement toward a more adequate total 
view of the world, due to change in the underlying 
thought of these two aspects of life, results in part 
from the development of the more concrete sciences, 
such as Biology, Psychology, and Sociology. The 
influence of Biology in particular should be noted. 
Biology? is still not sufficiently founded to resist as 
fully as it might the transcription of its terms to 
those of physics, one of the oldest of the sciences. 
But Biology is rapidly becoming able to establish 
its own distinctive categories. Lloyd Morgan, * 
L. T. Hobhouse,* J. Bi S. Haldane® are among 


3 Significant is L. J. Henderson’s Work, The Order of Nature. 
4 Emergent Evolution. 

5 Development and Purpose, 

6 The New Physiology and Life. 


AND SCIENTIFIC METHOD 151 


those who have drawn upon Biology in the inter- 
ests of metaphysics. 

Another movement working to the same end of 
recasting the concepts of mind and purpose versus 
matter and mechanism, so that a more adequate 
metaphysics may arise, is the theory of emergence.* 
According to this view matter does not exclude 
life, nor life mind, nor mind some higher entity, 
such as God. Life is not something left over when 
one has analyzed out all that constitutes matter, nor 
is mind the remainder that is left when one sub- 
tracts what constitutes matter, and life. Rather, 
matter, when it has attained to a cerain degree of 
complexity in organization, gives rise to a wholly 
new quality called life, just as chemical compon- 
ents, when brought into a certain form and com- 
plexity of organization, give rise to something 
wholly new—water out of hydrogen and oxygen, 
for instance. “The water does not cease to be hy- 
drogen and oxygen, but at the same time it is some- 
thing radically different from them. The new 
relation into which these elements enter is not 
merely an additive relation but a creative one. 
Water can be analyzed into hydrogen and oxygen 
but can never be properly called ‘“‘nothing but’’ 
hydrogen and oxygen. So also a living organism 
may be analyzed into inorganic elements in such 
a way as to leave nothing over. But these ele- 
ments organized in a certain way constitute some- 
thing wholly different from inorganic matter; 


7 Typical exponents of this are S. Alexander, Space Time and Deity; and 
Lloyd Morgan, Creative Evolution, 


152 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 


namely life. “The new relation into which the ele- 
ments enter is a creative one. 

Of course it does not necessarily follow that the 
more complex levels of existence are chronologi- 
cally later than the more simple, although it is 
thought that this is the way they have evolved on 
our planet. Whether or not there ever was a time 
when there was nothing but matter throughout the 
whole universe, only later giving rise to the emer- 
gence of life and other higher levels of existence, is 
purely a matter of speculation. The best we can 
do is to trace the evolutionary process on our own 
planet, and even that is very incompletely known. 
And of course the story of our little earth is by no 
means the whole story of matter, life and mind. 
not to speak of God. So far as concerns the logic 
of the theory of emergence, there may have been 
always the more complex organizations along with 
the more simple; the universe may have contained 
throughout all time those complex systems which 
are required for the existence of the higher orders, 

We do not wish to set up this metaphysical view 
as the last word of truth. We are only pointing 
to it as typical of a movement now going on which 
renders obsolete the old, exclusive materialistic 
assumptions of scientific thought, and shows the 
influence of Biology and the new theory of rela- 
tivity in recasting the prevailing views of the uni- 
verse. 

But perhaps the most radical and important 
recasting of these basic concepts of science is to be 
traced to the theory of relativity itself. While this 


AND SCIENTIFIC METHOD 5B. 


theory is not a metaphysical doctrine, it quite com- 
pletely breaks down certain assumptions of an ear- 
lier Physics. The best exponent of the wider 
applications of relativity is A. N. Whitehead. 
While he has not himself taken up the positive 
work of metaphysical reconstruction, he has done 
the negative work of showing that the metaphysics 
of materialism is impossible. How closely he treads 
on the borders of metaphysics and how wistfully 
he gazes into those mysterious regions is indicated 
in the following statement:® 


ay the past and future meet and 
mingle in the ill-defined present. The passage of 
nature which is only another name for the crea- 
tive force of existence has no narrow ledge of defi- 
nite instantaneous present within which to oper- 
ate. Its operative present which is now urging 
nature forward must be sought for throughout 
the whole, in the remotest past as well as in the 
narrowest breadth of any present duration. Per- 
haps also in the unrealized future. Perhaps also 
in the future which might be as well as the actual 
future which will be. It is impossible to medi- 
tate on time and the mystery of the creative pass- 
age of nature without an overwhelming emotion 
at the limitations of human intelligence. 


When he speaks of the creative force of exist- 
ence; when he says that the operative present in- 
cludes the remote past and may also involve the 
future, and the future that might be determines the 

8 Concept of Nature, p. 73. In a work published since this was written, 


Science and the Modern World, Whitehead develops the metaphysical im- 
plications which we have here detected. wear 


154 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 


Operative present as well as the future that shall be, 
is he not coming very close to saying that mind 
and purpose are at work in all nature? When we 
come to formulate a concept of purpose and mind, 
as we shall do forthwith, I think we shall find 
that this description fits it most remarkably. If to 
understand the operative present we must search 
the future that might be as well as the future that 
shall be, we certainly have mind and purpose. Of 
course Whitehead only throws this out as a sug- 
gestion, but a suggestion which is altogether com- 
patible with the basic concepts of physics and the 
other sciences. 

We must now turn from the metaphysical as- 
sumptions of science to those of religious experi- 
ence. For if it is necessary to recast the basic con- 
cepts of science in order to develop an adequate 
total view of the world, it is not less necessary to 
recast the basic concepts of religious experience. 
We refer particularly to the concepts of mind, per- 
sonality and purpose. The Christian religion is 
based on the assumption that personality and pur- 
pose must somehow be at the root of all things just 
as much as the exact sciences are based on the 
assumption that nature involves predictable and 
controllable elements. But the concepts of person- 
ality and purpose which have prevailed in the past 
have been most unsatisfactory—just as unsatisfac- 
tory as the concepts heretofore prevailing in science 
concerning that in nature which is predictable and 
controllable. Just as the theory of relativity has 
forced a change of these scientific concepts, which 


Es 


——— 


: 
: 
: 
. 
| 


AND SCIENTIFIC METHOD 155 


is favorable to a better adjustment of science and 
religion, so also it is necessary to bring about a 
change in our concepts of purpose and mind if we 
are to meet this new advance half way and enable 
these two sides of life to work together in that 
fashion which is so important to the good of 
human life. 


We believe the great difficulty experienced here- 
tofore in trying to find mind and purpose in the 
world, even in human beings, in such form as 
clearly to think and describe it, has been due to the 
very inadequate concepts of these objects of search. 
We cannot find an object if we do not know what 
its chief characters are. We must know what it is 
we are looking for. The kind of purpose which 
some have tried to find in life and in the world gen- 
erally is a kind of ‘‘purpose’’ which has no exist- 
ence anywhere. Naturally it could not be found. 

Let us turn to a rigorous scientific thinker and 
arch-positivist for light on the nature of purpose, 
mind and personality. He is by no means the only 
one who has presented this view of purpose. It 
has been independently developed elsewhere. But 
since he has allied himself with science and con- 
siders the beliefs of religion pure illusion, the view 
of purpose which he considers valid can scarcely 
be inimical to the claims of science. We refer to 
E. Rignano.’ 


The living organism is distinguished from the 
inorganic, according to Rignano, by what he calls 
“mnemonic accumulations.” In the highest intel- 


9 He has developed his ideas in The Psychology of Reasoning. 


156 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 


ligences, such as that of man, this may appear in 
the form of memory, recognition, and that supple- 
menting of sensations which gives rise to percep- 
tion, as well as in other intellectual processes. But 
in the lowliest organisms, and indeed wherever life 
is found, we find these mnemonic accumulations in 
the sense that the living always strives in such a 
Way as to regain or preserve the conditions to which 
it has become habituated. If it has become accus- 
tomed to a certain temperature, it is restless until 
it regains that temperature. In other words, past 
happenings control the behavior of the organism; 
while the inanimate thing, like a stone, is controlled 
by present happenings only. The stone does not 
try to regain the temperature to which it has be- 
come habituated, nor the degree of light which has 
become customary to it. The organism has the 
peculiar characteristic of ‘‘reactivating’’ some past 
experience, of “reproducing it’’ or having it again 
“evoked,” so that it becomes a dominating factor 
in the operations of the present. 

Thus life means the accumulation of past events. 
It means the amplification of the present moment 
by integrating it with the past. For matter as such 
the present moment is the only time there is. The 
material particle is not controlled by reactivation or 
reproduction of what has befallen it in the past. 
For it the past is nothing; the present, only, is. 
But anything which is capable of forming habits 
is controlled by something more than the present; 
the past still lives with it. This is true of “blind” 
habit; but it is also true of conscious purpose, of 


OO ee ee 


—— ee 


AND SCIENTIFIC METHOD P/ 


planning and thinking, of aspiring and loving. In 
fact this property of mnemonic accumulation, if 
taken broadly enough, seems to be at least one nec- 
essary factor to account for all the phenomena of 
life, such as growth of the cell from embryo to 
adult, the reproduction of maimed portions of the 
organism, the healing of a wound, the whole proc- 
ess of anabolism. 

When it comes to the higher “‘spiritual’’ forms 
of life it is plain that love and aspiration require 
that past experience be drawn upon and that it con- 
tinue to operate in controlling the behavior and 
providing material for thought and contemplation. 
As we saw in the previous chapter love, more than 
anything else save worship, gathers up the past, 
contemplates it in the present and by means of it 
foresees the future. May we not conclude, then, 
that life, purpose and spirit all have this generic 
character of mnemonic accumulation. At the 
levels of what we ordinarily call spirit and purpose 
it certainly attains a breadth, complexity and form 
which is not found at the lower biological levels. 
But it is a further amplification and development 
of this generic character. 

Here, then, do we not have a tenable concept of 
spirit and purpose? It is the preservation of the 
past as operative in the present and as shaping the 
future. Such mind and purpose throughout na- 
ture would be an “‘operative present’’ which in- 
cluded ‘“‘the remotest past as well as the narrowest 
breadth of any present duration,’’ and furthermore 
included “‘the future that might be’’ as well as the 


158 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 


“future that shall be.’ So far as Biology has in- 
_ vestigated, this peculiar ‘‘mnemonic accumulation” 
has always involved physical organism. Naturally 
Biology could not find it elsewhere for that is all 
that Biology investigates. But the biological or- 
ganism may be only one instance of this. In fact, 
Whitehead seems to be very sure that the whole 
passage of nature involves in its operative present 
all the past. 

What the total fact of this world may be we can 
not clearly and fully state. Recent reconstruction 
of the basic concepts of science have served not to 
reveal the nature of this total fact but to mark out 
the limits of scientific knowledge and to remove 
certain old metaphysical assumptions inherited 
from the Greeks, which have hindered the assimi- 
lation of the scientific to the religious view of the 
world. What we do know is: (1) that certain 
finely devised experiments yield certain results with 
a very high degree of uniformity, and (2) that a 
certain awareness of the concrete fullness of experi- 
ence yields values indispensable to human living. 
With these two legs to our ladder we can climb. 
Without both we are undone. The metaphysi- 
cian is free to climb to the top of this ladder and 
find what is there to be seen. But let him not kick 
the ladder from beneath his feet. Let him not 
think he can dispense with either leg. Experimen- 
tal verification on the one hand, and the values of 
immediate experience on the other, are the only 
supports he has and the only supports the human 
race can have. ‘These are the two sides of life 


AND SCIENTIFIC METHOD 159 


which we have been portraying. We must never 
allow our inordinate interest in the one to destroy 
concern for the other. For the one without the 
other comes to nought. 


CHARTERS VI 
SCIENTIFIC METHOD 


Science does not deal with all that is. It adopts 
the method of Descartes and attacks the universe 
piecemeal. The scientist isolates certain portions 
of the world and deals with them to the exclusion 
of all else. ‘He assumes, for instance, that in con- 
sidering a small portion of the universe he can 
neglect all the rest. He goes on this assumption 
until he finds it is wrong. If it is wrong, he looks 
round and brings another little bit of the universe 
into his ken, and continues altering his field of 
observation until his isolated system behaves as 
though it were really isolated. All the time he is 
able to leave the whole universe as such alone; he 
gets all the advantages he could have got out of a 
theory of the universe without the disadvantages.’”? 

Any such portion of the universe selected by 
science for treatment is not, necessarily, a unit of 
time and space. It may be a fine thread of corre- 
lation which can be traced throughout time and 
space. 

A most excellent statement of scientific method 
is made by Ralph Barton Perry: ‘Scientific de- 
scription, then, is governed by two motives, on the 


1 Ritchie, A. D., Scientific Method, p. 7, 
160 


AND SCIENTIFIC METHOD 161 


one hand, unity, parsimony, or simplicity, the 
reduction of variety and change to as few terms as 
possible; and, on the other hand, exact formula- 
tion. When a scientific description, satisfying 
these conditions is experimentally verified, it is said 
to be a law. : 

Professor Perry Htbceeds to set forth the way 
in which Galileo formulated the law describing the 
acceleration of bodies falling to the earth. Galileo 
ignores everything about the body and its fall save 
only certain very specific properties of time and 
space. He describes it all in terms of d, which 
stands for the constant variation in distance from 
the starting point, and t, which is the correspond- 
ing constant variation in time. The fact that the 
body passes me as it falls, or that it reflects the light 
of the sun, or that it crushes a flower when it hits 
the ground, and innumerable other features about 
the fall which may be just as striking to a casual 
observer and have more immediate vital signifi- 
cance to individuals at the time, all this is excluded 
from consideration as being irrelevant. Irrelevant 
to what? Irrelevant to the particular kind of con- 
cept Galileo was trying to formulate. And what 
was the nature of this concept? 

Here we come to the central motive of scientific 
investigation, the index of its great value and the 
mark of its severe limitations. Galileo was trying 
to formulate a concept of falling bodies of such a 
nature that it would exclude from consideration 
all the unforeseeable, innumerable, indefinable, un- 
controllable, swarming multiplicity of features 


162 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 


that enter into any such fall, but would clearly 
specify certain abstract features which could always 
be foreseen, calculated and accurately described, in 
any such fall. And why was it so exceedingly im- 
portant to abstract just these features from all the 
rest? From the standpoint of pure science (and 
this is the dominating motive of the scientific in- 
vestigator despite the effort to blur the distinction 
between pure and applied science) the value of such 
a concept is that it enables the investigator to per- 
form experiments in imagination, to combine in 
thought innumerable operations, thus saving the 
time and labor involved in physical experimenta- 
tion, and above all making it possible to perform 
experiments on nature far beyond the reach of 
physical experimentation. One can perform ex- 
periments in thought and combine them in many 
different ways, and calculate the results with cer- 
tainty, only if he can isolate in such experiments 
some one feature which will certainly be present in 
all cases and will certainly fulfill itself according 
to a mathematical formula. That is just exactly 
the sort of feature in falling bodies which Galileo 
succeeded in isolating. Hence the great importance 
of the concept which he formulated. 

Let us quote further from Perry’s account of 
this conception of the falling body with its dis- 
tance covering property d, and the time of its dura- 
tion ft. 


Now in this elementary mechanical concep- 
tion of uniform acceleration, appear all the most 
essential principles of exact science. It is a de- 


AND SCIENTIFIC METHOD 163 


scription of motion, because it simply records the 
behavior of the falling body, and does not seek 
further to account for or justify it. It is an 
analytical description, because it expresses motion 
as a relation of the terms, such as d, ft, etc., into 
which it can be analyzed. It is an exact descrip- 
tion because the terms and relations are mathemat- 
ically formulated, And it is a simplification and 
unification of phenomena, because it has discov- 
ered a constancy or identity underlying bare differ- 
ences. As we proceed to more complex concepts 
we shall not, I think, meet with any new prin- 
ciples of method as fundamental as these... . 

I am led to conclude, therefore, that all of 
these concepts are essentially ratios or relational 
complexes of the simple terms of experience, such 
as space, time, color, sound, etc., and that each of 
these ratios or relational complexes expresses some 
specific complexity or configuration, which is 
found in nature. And I judge that these concepts 
illustrate the motive of science; which is simply 
to describe and record, with special reference to 


their unity and constancy, the actual changes of 
bodies.” 


We have quoted Professor Perry at some length 
because we think this is a most excellent statement 
of the way science portrays the world. Also it 
serves to introduce a matter of prime importance. 

Professor Perry says that science describes in the 
simplest terms possible with accuracy, exactly what 
occurs in a certain mass of experience made up of 
space, time, sound, color, etc. But the matter of 


2 Perry, R. B., Present Philosophical Tendencies, pp. 55-62. 


164 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 


prime consideration to us just now is the fact that 
that same mass of experience could be described 
with equal accuracy in wholly different terms and 
the object which that description would disclose in 
the event experienced might be wholly different 
from what the ordinary simplified scientific de- 
scription portrays. Take, for instance, our solar 
system. ‘The accepted scientific description of it 
is the Copernican-Newtonian, because that is the 
simplest. “The object it presents is “he central sun 
with the planets moving regularly <1d ceaselessly 
about it in elliptical orbits. But that same identi- 
cal experience which we all have when we turn 
our eyes to the sky at night could be described with 
equal truth by a modernized form of the Ptole- 
maic description, in which the planets do not move 
about the sun but in complex orbits of their own. 
It would be correct, furthermore, to describe the 
sun as moving about the earth. The difficulty with 
such descriptions other than the Copernican is not 
their incorrectness but the vast complexity that they 
involve. ‘They are unscientific not because they 
are untrue but because they would be so complex 
as to be almost useless for further scientific pur- 
poses. 

Here, then, we have a given experience of the 
sky. Following Whitehead we can call this fact 
experienced an event. This event may be correctly 
described in many different ways. How many dif- 
ferent ways we do not know. Each different cor- 
rect description would reveal in the event a differ- 
ent object. We have already noted two different 


AND SCIENTIFIC METHOD 165 


correct descriptions revealing two very different 
objects in the same event. How many other cor- 
rect descriptions there may be of this event, and 
consequently how many different objects may be 
“ingredient’’ in it, we do not know. There may 
be any number of different objects in it, differing 
in character from one another far more than the 
two we have mentioned. And these other objects are 
just as truly existent as are those which science does 
treat. Most of these objects science deliberately 
ignores for good reason. ‘They are too complex. 


So far as the claims of science are at fault, per- 
haps the greatest cause for maladjustment between 
science and religion has been the failure of the fol- 
lowers of science to see that science treats of only a 
very few of the objects that inhere in experience. 


The fallacy of simplification consists in assum- 
ing that, when a natural mechanism has been 
traced out and described the phenomena charac- 
teristic of it have been fully set forth and accounted 
for. As a matter of fact, however true and val- 
uable the mechanical description may be, it is after 
all an account of part of the facts, not of the 
whole of them. To assume the contrary is to 
forget that a mechanical description is necessarily 
in general terms, and that the more immediate and 
peculiar features of the object under inquiry are 
abstracted from and not included in it. A descrip- 
tion in terms of adjustment, motion, number, 
order, and so forth, is the kind of description that 
will apply to multitudes of cases, and which 
therefore must omit what is distinctive of those 


166 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 


cases taken singly. Especially does it fail to do 
justice to the data, its interest being in the rela- 
tions, not in the elementary facts.* 


It is a little difficult to illustrate the many differ- 
ent objects that inhere in a given bit of experience, 
because science searches for that one object which 
is most simple and can be made to serve her pur- 
poses best. And since science is the only means we 
have for searching out with accuracy and verifica- 
tion the different objects that enter into experience, 
we have difficulty pointing out these other objects. 
But a little consideration makes it plain that these 
other objects are truly existent there. For instance, 
matter is described by physics in terms of electrons 
and matter is certainly an electronic object, if this 
view has been completely verified. But the object 
we deal with in terms of electrons is very different 
from the ordinary perceptual object of matter. 
The various sense qualities do not enter into the 
physicist’s description. Yet there certainly is a 
material object made up of these sense qualities or 
to which these qualities pertain. A description 
that leaves them out, simply leaves them out. It 
is not dealing with the same object, although it 
may very well be dealing with the same event or 
mass of experience. 

A thought similar to this is expressed by A. B. 
Eddington, who writes: 


We have a world of point-events with their 
primary interval-relations. Out of these an un- 
limited number of more complicated relations and 


8 Cooley, W. F., The Principles of Science, pp. 149, 150. 


AND SCIENTIFIC METHOD 167 


qualities can be built up mathematically, describing 
various features of the state of the world. These 
exist in nature in the same sense as an unlimited 
number of walks exist on an open moor. But the 
existence is, as it were, latent unless someone gives 
a significance to the walk by following it; and in 
the same way the existence of any one of these 
qualities of the world only acquires significance 
above its fellows, if a mind singles it out for 
recognition. Mind filters out matter from the 
meaningless jumble of qualities, as the prism fil- 
ters out the colours of the rainbow from the 
chaotic pulsations of white light. Mind exalts 
the permanent and ignores the transitory; and it 
appears from the mathematical study of relations 
that the only way in which mind can achieve her 
object is by picking out one particular quality as 
the permanent substance of the perceptual world, 
partitioning a perceptual time and space for it to 
be permanent in, and, as a necessary consequence 
of this Hobson’s choice, the laws of gravitation 
and mechanics and geometry have to be obeyed. 
Is it too much to say that the mind’s search for 
permanence has created the world of physics?* 


Perhaps the most striking contrast of different 
objects entering into the same space-time complex 
appears when we consider how the different sciences 
deal with a human being. He may be described 
as a dance of electrons, and the description would 
be correct. He is that sort of object to the physi- 
cist when the latter is employing a certain tech- 
nique. The whole man, without residue, could be 


4 Eddington, A. S., Space, Time and Gravitation, p. 196. 


168 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 


analyzed into chemical terms. A different object 
is then brought to light. Again he may be reduced 
to the terms of biology and we have still another 
object in the same event. Again the psychologist 
and sociologist describe him and he becomes still 
another object. Finally the man’s personal friend 
discerns in him another object, his friend, who is 
quite different from a swarm of electrons, or a sys- 
tem of bio-chemistry, or even a sociological entity. 
This object with which the friend deals cannot be 
so accurately described and verified as can the scien- 
tific objects which inhere in the mass of experience, 
because science is the only means of accurate de- 
scription and verification, and this object which 
concerns the friend is so intricately complex as to 
escape the reach of any scientific method now in 
sight. But no one will doubt that this friendly 
object exists. He is an “‘object of belief’ rather 
than an ‘‘object of scientific theory,’’ but he does 
not become any the less real on that account. But 
still on beyond the object to which the friend 
reacts, is the object which the man discerns when 
he considers himself. His own introspective and 
self-conscious view of himself reveals still another 
object. 

A given event, to use Whitehead’s language, 
may have an infinite number of different objects 
as ingredients in it, according as it is described in 
one set of terms or another, or as it might be cor- 
rectly described, whether any one actually does so 
or not. But all the sciences put together have not 
yet begun to bring to light all the objects that 


AND SCIENTIFIC METHOD 169 


inhere in most events. Furthermore, they never 
will. They never will for one thing, because they 
seem to be limited to the most simplified descrip- 
tions. Also many correct descriptions would be 
of no value to science. Science will develop only 
those descriptions which can serve the purposes of 
science. And the purpose of science, we have seen, 
is to formulate definite concepts of those features 
of experience which can be certainly predicted, 
accurately calculated, and experimentally treated 
in imagination, thus transcending the narrow limits 
of constant physical experimentation, and opening 
the way to the discovery and correct description of 
innumerable objects otherwise completely hidden 
from us. Of course physical experimentation can 
never be discarded, but it becomes merely a check 
and a guide to the intellectual combination of 
great numbers of experiments, most of which do 
not have to be performed by actual physical manip- 
ulation at the time because similar experiments 
have been performed at other times, and on the 
basis of these it is possible to calculate what the 
result will be if the conditions are given. To ex- 
periment in the imagination means to set up certain 
imaginary conditions and calculate what the result 
would be if certain operations were carried out. 
One of the chief means of scientific discovery is by 
just such imaginary experiments, or instance, a 
certain result is observed. The investigator sets 
up certain imaginary conditions and calculates from 
them what the result will be. If the result thus 
attained by calculation from imaginary conditions 


170 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 


proves to be identical with the result under physt- 
cal observation, he has strong reason for believing 
that the conditions he has imagined are the actual 
conditions producing the phenomenon under inves- 
tigation. Of course this is only one step in the total 
process of discovery, but it is one of the most im- 
portant. 


The point is, that science consists far more in 
the purely imaginative and intellectual perform- 
ance and combination of experiments than it does 
of physical manipulation, however indispensable 
the latter may be. And this imaginative and in- 
tellectual treatment of its subject matter is only 
possible because of these predictable and accurately 
described features of experience which have been 
brought to light by such concepts as those formed 
by Galileo concerning falling bodies. It is no longer 
necessary to experiment physically with every fall- 
ing body to see whether in its case it is true that 
v/t=g. Because it is the purpose of science to dis- 
cover features of experience which can be subjected 
to such purely imaginative and intellectual treat- 
ment, the following statement by E. Mach, con- 
cerning scientific description of fact, holds true: 
‘‘A rule reached by the observation of facts, cannot 
possibly embrace the entire fact in its infinite rich- 
ness, in all its inexhaustible manifoldness; on the 
contrary, it can furnish only a rough outline of 
the fact, one-sidedly emphasizing only the feature 
that is of importance for the given technical or 
scientific aim in question.’’® 


5 Mach, E., “Die Mechanik in threr Entwicklung historisch-kritisch 
dargestellt.”’ 


AND SCIENTIFIC METHOD We | 


Here we find very narrow limits imposed upon 
science in its efforts to portray the world in which 
we live and the objects with which we deal. We 
do not point to these limitations with any sense 
of gratification, for we are all losers thereby. We 
certainly should like to discover the scientifically 
verified truth concerning all the objects with which 
we deal. But we cannot do so because the very 
accuracy and precision which science introduces into 
knowledge forces her to use only the most simple 
terms—terms so simple that they cannot describe 
these more complex objects. 

Any mass of experience is actually all those dif- 
ferent objects which it might be correctly described 
to be, whether any one ever has the wit and skill 
to describe it so or not. Furthermore, in undergo- 
ing that mass of experience, we are actually experi- 
encing all those different objects. We may not have 
any knowledge of them. We certainly have no 
knowledge of most of the objects that enter into 
the manifold of ordinary experience. For instance, 
we do not ordinarily cognize the electrons that 
enter into daily experience, nor the light of the 
stars that shine by day or the invisible stars at any 
time, nor the currents of air that flow about us, nor 
the minerals that compose the soil beneath our feet, 
although all these do enter into our experience in 
the sense of shaping the total occurrence that we 
experience. Scientific discovery consists in bringing 
to light some of these ingredients of our experience. 
Among these objects which enter constantly into 
our daily lives are doubtless many which no science 


Way? RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 


has ever yet guessed at. Into such daily experi- 
ence there constantly enter other human minds, out 
associates. Into such daily experience there also en- 
ters God, however unnoticed, because it is this total 
event which yields the religious experience when 
our awareness is sufficiently opened to it. The total 
occurrence which we experience is actually all the 
objects which it may be correctly described as being. 
Such being the case it is plain that we are constantly 
and intimately in converse with innumerable ob- 
jects which are wholly beyond the ken of the sev- 
eral sciences. 

Some of these objects are known to us by ‘‘com- 
mon sense’ and are objects of belief, as Perry would 
say, but are not subject to scientific description. Such 
beliefs canot be tested by science, either because of 
the complexity of their object or because such ob- 
jects of belief do not fit into the purpose of scien- 
tific description as that purpose was above defined. 
For instance, the total personality whom I love 
and contemplate, including that particular tone of 
voice and glint of eye and pressure of hand and 
much else of rich, concrete, sensuous material, can- 
not be scientifically described for both reasons just 
mentioned. 

Psychology and sociology come nearer to de- 
scribing the beloved personal object than any other 
sciences now at our command. But even they fall 
far short of it. Furthermore, the degree to which 
they seem to approximate a scientific description 
of that concrete fullness of experience which enters 


AND SCIENTIFIC METHOD Psa 


into the beloved personality, is probably illusory, 
for they can seem to approach this concrete fullness 
of description only by abandoning the scientific 
method and falling into what is more or less the 
method of pre-scientific appreciation. In fact, psy- 
chology and sociology have hardly yet attained the 
status of science, and are constantly falling into the 
inaccuracies and guesses of pre-scientific thinking, 
Let us quote from J. B. S. Haldane on this: 


Why then am I not a psychologist? Because, 
with all respect for psychologists, I do not think 
psychology is yet a science. Mechanics became a 
science when physicists had decided what they 
meant by such words as weight, velocity, and 
force, but not till then. The psychologists are 
still trying to arrive at a satisfactory terminology 
for the simplest phenomena they have to deal 
with. Until they are clearer as to the exact mean- 
ing of the words they use, they can hardly begin 
to record events on scientific lines. Moreover I 
do not believe that psychology will go very far 
without a satisfactory physiology of the nervous 
system, any more than physiology could advance 
until physics and chemistry had developed to a 
certain point. This is not to say that physiol- 
ogy is a mere branch of physics or chemistry, or 
mind a mere by-product of the brain. But it is 
a fact that we can only know about life by ob- 
serving the movements of matter. You may be 
the most spiritually minded man on earth, but 
I can only learn that fact hy seeing, hearing or 
feeling your bodily movements. As the latter 


174 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 


depend on events in your brain, I may as well 
get some information about those points. To 
study psychology before we understand physiology 
of the brain is like trying to study physics with- 
out a knowledge of mathematics. Physics is more 
than mathematics, as matter is more than space, 
but you cannot have one without the other. Now 
at the moment the physiology of the nervous sys- 
tem is being worked out with great speed, and 
by contributing to its progress I suspect I am do- 
doing more for psychology than if I became a 
psychologist.® 


But if the apparent closeness that psychology 
seems to attain in describing the object that I know 
in friendly intercourse as my friend, be due to its 
lack of strict scientific method, it is probable that 
when psychology does become strictly scientific it 
will so delimit its field and simplify its terms that 
the object it discloses will be much more remote 
from that common sense object that I know as a 
personality. The behaviorists, for instance, would 
seem to be among the most scientific of the psy- 
chologists, but the stricter of them deny that they 
have anything to do with consciousness, or mind, 
or personality, as these are generally understood 
by common sense. It may be claimed that there are 
no such objects as consciousness or mind or person- 
ality in the sense in which common sense under- 
stands them. If in taking such a position one means 
to assert that the definitions and descriptions by 
common sense are inaccurate, then one is certainly 


6 The New Republic, Dec. 3, 1924, 


— a oe 


AND SCIENTIFIC METHOD 175 


in the right. For common sense is not accurate. If 
one claims that there is no such thing as color as 
understood by common sense, meaning thereby 
merely to assert that the definitions of color made 
by common sense are inaccurate, one is in the right. 
But if one means to assert that there is nothing at 
all but electromagnetic vibrations, because these 
descriptions are scientifically accurate, and that 
there is no color at all that could be correctly de- 
scribed in any other terms, then one is certainly in 
the wrong. The same is true of mind, conscious- 
ness and personality. 

The question is this: Are these objects which 
common sense inaccurately describes, but which it 
is trying to describe, and which could not be de- 
scribed save by terms much more complex than any 
psychology or other science could possibly employ, 
truly existent in nature independently of human 
ideas about them? Our answer must be that many 
beliefs of common sense are blundering attempts 
to think correctly about objects which we experience 
and which are truly existent in the sense that an 
omniscient science could portray them, but which 
are beyond the reach of our present science. 

It is in this extra-scientific way that we know. 
God. We are acquainted with certain masses of 
experience which have as an ingredient that which 
is more important for the safety and growth of 
human life than anything else, although we are 
unable to specify just what it is. That object is 
God, because the word God signifies such an object, 
whether known or unknown. 


176 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 


We have already described in different ways that 
particular state of awareness which has God as its 
object. We have spoken of the mystic awareness 
of the total datum in which all data are merged. 
But since we have referred to the matter just now 
in relation to the limits of science, let us describe 
this state of attentive awareness in terms of one of 
the keenest and most thorough scientific thinkers of 
our time. A. N. Whitehead states precisely what we 
mean by such a state of awarenss. He does not give 
it any religious significance, but he sets it forth as 
altogether valid. He writes:? ““The immediate fact 
for awareness is the whole occurrence of nature.” 
But this whole occurrence of nature rarely engages 
our attention. We do not ordinarily cognize it, 
have any emotion with regard to it, or react to it 
in any way. Rather, what engages our attention, 
what stirs our emotion and awakens us to response, 
is some entity or factor which we have discrimi- 
nated within this total event. It is these objects in- 
gredient in the event which are the matters of prime 
concern to practical and theoreical interest as they 
operate in ordinary life or in scientific investiga- 
tion. But, nevertheless it is true, as Whitehead 
says, that: 


“The ultimate fact for sense-awareness is an event. 
This whole event is discriminated by us into par- 
tial events.’’ ° 


But it is possible for attentive awareness to be 
opened to this total event. For the most part, it 


7 The Concept of Nature, p. 14. 
8 loc, cit. p. 15, 


AND SCIENTIFIC METHOD 177 


is true, we consider only “‘partial events.”” ‘‘We 
are aware of an event which is our bodily life, of 
an event which is the course of nature within this 
room, and of a vaguely perceived aggregate of other 
partial events. This is the discrimination in sense 
awareness of fact into parts.’’ ° 


But there are times when this whole occurrence 
of nature, this total event, may engage attention. 
“Occasionally our own sense-perception in mo- 
ments when thought-activity has been lulled to 
quiescence is not far off the attainment of this ideal 
hint ea 

Whitehead does not seem to attach any value to 
this state of awareness. He suggests that ‘‘The 
sense perception of some lower forms of life may be 
conjectured to approximate to this character habitu- 
ally.” That is, of course, a possible conjecture. 
But we believe all the evidence is to the contrary. It 
would seem that the awareness of the lower animals 
is very rigidly determined by certain automatisms 
and that these constantly hold the attention upon 
certain individual data or, as Whitehead would ex- 
press it, certain factors, which are necessary to guide 
the behavior of the organism. However, it is, of 
course, pure conjecture to talk about what the lower 
animals may be aware of. If they are aware of 
“the total fact’’ which is inclusive of all nature, 
still it would not be for them a religious experience. 
For in order that it be religious, one must derive 
from it those values which religious experience 


loc. cit. p. 15. 
10 loc. cit, p, 14. 


178 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 


yields, and the lower animals show no evidence of 
this. This state of awareness certainly does not 
come to us humans in ordinary sleep or semi- 
consciousness or stupor. At such times the attention 
is engaged by fragments of sensuous experience that 
are revived from the past and stream more or less 
chaotically before the mind in the form of phan- 
tasy. Io become aware of total fact is a rather dif- 
ficult art, although some mystics seem to have a 
natural aptitude for it and there are fleeting mo- 
ments when perhaps we all approximate it more or 
less, as Whitehead suggests. 

This “total event’”’ can no doubt be correctly 
described as having electrons as its ingredients, and 
many other things besides. It can also be described 
as having God as its ingredient. That is to say, it 
can be correctly defined as that which, when made 
the object of attentive awareness, yields the values 
of religious experience. That is what we mean by 
God when approached from the standpoint of ex- 
perience. This immediate experience of the ‘‘whole 
occurrence of nature’ may signify time and space 
and color and sound, for all these are ingredients 
of nature; but it also signifies God. And its divine 
significance does not exclude the others, nor the 
others the divine. 

Mr. Whitehead is very careful not to discuss the 
religious and metaphysical implications of his con- 
cept of nature. Especially does he insist upon re- 
jecting what he calls the “‘bifurcation’’ of nature, 
which means that the object or event observed must 
not be confused with the mind that does the observ- 


AND SCIENTIFIC METHOD 179 


ing. Because the mind describes nature, the nature 
thus described must not therefore be thought to 
partake of the nature of mind.. In this we most 
heartily agree. We feel that he has contributed im- 
mensely to the clarification of the whole field of 
experience by this insistence; and that he has 
opened the way to a far more satisfactory interpre- 
tation of the object of religious experience as well 
as to a more satisfactory scientific description of 
natural processes. As long as we think that the 
observing mind must perforce give its own qualities 
to everything which it observes, our thinking is 
constantly moving in a circle and we find ourselves 
headed back toward solipsism with almost every 
turn. This view, that whatever we know must 
partake of the nature of mind, has seemed an easy 
way to prove the postulates of religious faith. If 
everything we know must partake of the nature of 
mind, if everything for which we strive must par- 
take of the nature of an ideal which is, by defini- 
tion, a spiritual entity, then it seems easy to prove 
that we have constantly to do with a supreme mind 
like our own, a universal idealizing personality like 
unto ourselves. But the way is altogether too easy. 
It proves too much. If we follow that path rigor- 
ously to the end, and not merely just to that point 
where it seems to serve our religious needs, we find 
ourselves at last merely with our own mental con- 
structions. Everything we know partakes of the 
nature of self. Self closes us in on every hand. We 
are caught in the net of self, and struggle as we may 
we can never deal with anything save the self, for 


180 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 


everything must forthwith turn into the self as soon 
as we have any dealings with it at all. Such a magic 
circle is intolerable. We may take the leap of faith, 
of course, and claim that there must be that outside 
the self which acts upon us, but it is a blind leap 
of faith. This way of thinking has lured too many 
into its toils. Whitehead breaks free of it and opens 
up the wide regions of fact independent of self and 
clears the suffocating air laden with too much self. 


But this view of nature presented by Whitehead 
and others, which insists that nature does not par- 
take of the nature of self merely because the self 
cognizes it, and experiences it, has been greatly 
misinterpreted.** This view most certainly does not 
imply that nature must therefore be mindless or 
that a universal mind may not inhere in nature. 
Whitehead simply does not enter into that problem, 
but there is nothing in his theory of bifurcation of 
nature which contradicts that view. For the bifur- 
cation of nature applies to the confusion of self 
with objects observed; it implies nothing beyond 
that concerning the nature of the observed object. 
Nature may very well be moved and sustained by 
the operation of a supreme mind or personality. 
In fact, Whitehead is most emphatic in his rejection 
of materialism; and we believe that his work, to- 
gether with that of others akin to him, has ren- 
dered materialism altogether obsolete among the 
well informed. Furthermore, his insistence that the 
event, rather than the object, is the basic fact of 
nature and that nature is marked by a ‘‘creative 


11 See, for instance, Edgar Pierce, Philosophy of Character, chap. IX, 


AND SCIENTIFIC METHOD 181 


advance’’ lends itself most readily to the religious 
interpretation. For “‘event’’ and “‘creative advance’ 
mean precisely that in nature the past does not drop 
out of existence with each successive instant, as 
materialism would declare, but that the past con- 
tinues operative with the present to shape the fu- 
ture. And this, as we saw in last chapter, is pre- 
cisely the best concept we can form of mind, pur- 
pose and life. Events pass, but the point-moment 
is not the only kind of event. It is not even the 
most important event, except for purposes of scien- 
tific analysis. It is no more “‘real’’ or ultimate than 
many other kinds of events. There is, above all, 
one all-inclusive event including all other events, 
and having as its ingredients all objects. Not all 
events involve a mind, but some do; and it may be 
that what gives the character and creative advance 
to the whole of nature and every part of nature is 
that there is operative throughout the whole of 
nature a Mind. 


While Mr. Whitehead, as already noted, is very 
careful not to discuss the religious and metaphysi- 
cal implications of his views, we believe his thought 
would not be inhospitable to what we have just 
written. Our reason for thinking so is based on a 
quotation which Mr. Whitehead makes from Dean 
Inge; and also Whitehead’s brief treatment of 
life and mind in his Principles of Natural Knowl- 
edge.” 


12 Chap. XVIII, on “Rhythms.” 


182 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 


The quotation from Dean Inge follows: 


Dr. Inge’s paper is entitled ‘‘Platonism and 
Human Immortality,’’ and in it there occurs the 
following statement: ““Tosumup. The Platonic 
doctrine of immortality rests on the independence 
of the spiritual world. The spiritual world is 
not a world of unrealized ideals, over against a 
real world of unspiritual fact. It is, on the con- 
trary, the real world of which we have a true 
though very incomplete knowledge, over against 
a world of common experience, which, as a com- 
plete whole, is not real, since it is compacted out 
of miscellaneous data, not all on the same level, 
by the help of the imagination. There is no 
world corresponding to the world of common 
experience. Nature makes abstractions for us, 
deciding what range of vibrations we are to see 
and hear, what things we are to notice and 
remember. 

I have cited these statements, [continues Mr. 
Whitehead, referring to another previous quota- 
tion along with that from Dean Inge] because 
both of them deal with topics which, though they 
lie outside the range of our discussion, are always 
being confused with it. “The reason is that they 
lie proximate to our field of thought, and are 
topics which are of burning interest to the meta- 
physically minded. 


In his treatment of life and mind under the head 
of rhythms in Principles of Natural Knowledge, he 
says that an individual life is not an object. ““To 
say that the object is alive suppresses the necessary 
reference to the event; and to say that an event is 


AND SCIENTIFIC METHOD 183 


alive suppresses the necessary reference to the ob- 
ject XS 

Life means rhythm. That is to say, it con- 
stantly recovers a certain status. But this rhythm 
is not altogether uniform. It passes out of the 
given status in various ways and recovers it in 
various ways. In other words, a life learns with 
the passage of time, or, it synthesizes the past with 
the present to some degree. 


Putting the matter in other language, life is that 
which learns, It is that which establishes habits and 
acquires new habits. 


We only refer to these statements from White- 
head to indicate that this view of nature, which 
must constitute the assumptions of science hence- 
forth, according to Whitehead, gives ample space 
for all that religious experience demands. 

To summarize: Scientific method is a device by 
which we disencumber ourselves of the great mass 
of experience in order to pick our way through 
the intricate space-time structure of all experience. 
The quickest, easiest, and surest way to pass from 
one object to another in thinking, especially when 
one is dealing with a great number and variety of 
objects, is to ignore everything about the objects 
save their space-time structure and to consider only 
certain distinctive features of that. Now, of course, 
all the sense qualities of experience cannot be ig- 
nored. We cannot pick our way through some 
phase of the intricate structure of experience unless 
we have at least a few sense data to guide us. But 


13 loc. cit. p. 196. 


184 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 


science endeavors to reduce these data to the utmost 
simplicity and to those particular data which serve 
to guide in making inferences, but which may not 
give any of the sensuous flavor and fullness of the 
experienced object. Science sifts out the great mass 
of experience, winnows it, and breaks it up until 
it discovers those rare and scattered bits of data 
which serve to guide inference through the maze 
of the space-time structure. These bits of experi- 
ence called data, which are thus selected by micro- 
scope and spectroscope, by mortar and acid and 
many other devices, these data are made to shine 
like jeweled lights at strategic points and critical 
turns of the space-time structure. But the world 
thus plotted and planned by science presents a 
wholly different aspect from that which is known 
by way of ordinary experience. The total con- 
crete object, which can be known with some de- 
gree of accuracy by means of common sense, is 
not the object which engages the attention of the 
scientist. He has not time to deal with such a 
cumbersome mass of experience. 

Let us illustrate. Science has a concept which 
designates not the experience of heat, but that mo- 
tion called energy, or the space covered by the mer- 
cury ina thermometer. There is no particular re- 
semblance between the rising and falling mercury 
and the experience of heat and cold. Science does 
not designate the experience of a falling body, but 
the ratio of motion which is the distinguishing 
feature of the space-time structure. It designates 
not light as experienced but the vibrations, which 


AND SCIENTIFIC METHOD 185 


again is space-time structure. It designates not the 
experience of sound, but the vibrations of the air, 
etc., etc. So it is that science develops a technique 
for dispensing with the massive bulk of experience, 
dealing only with certain carefully selected data, 
the ultimate precipitate of analysis. All else is 
cast aside as irrelevant. 

What we have said of science in general is just 
as true of psychology and sociology as it is of 
physics and chemistry. It is not so manifest in them 
partly because they are more complex, partly be- 
cause they have not yet developed an adequate tech- 
nique, and partly because they are so young that 
they are not yet thoroughly scientific in their think- 
ing. We do not mean that all science must be re- 
duced to the terms of physics and chemistry. On the 
contrary, we are very sure that each science must 
develop its own viewpoint, its own method and 
technique; and each must interpret the world in its 
own categories. But since all experience has the 
form of space and time, all science that studies ex- 
perience (and science can study nothing else), must 
work out the complex space-time interrelations of 
those data of experience which it has selected as 
its own peculiar subject matter. 

Scientific method transforms the character of our 
experience because it transforms our habits of re- 
sponse. The stimuli that once aroused us no longer 
stir us in so far as we assume the scientific attitude, 
for the scientific attitude means to be responsive to 
certain rarified and selected data at certain loci in 
space-time. The massive bulk of experience is 


186 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 


ignored. In so far as we are scientific the concrete 
object with all its savor’ and rich sensuous fullness 
and emotional stir is gone. It has disappeared like a 
bubble. Compare the world as known and felt by 
the modern scientific man with the world of the 
primitive man as revealed in his folk lore. To be 
sure this latter world is full of fancy, illusion and 
error. But all this efflorescence of illusion and emo- 
tion springs from a rich concrete sensuous mass of 
experience which he has not learned to ignore. The 
child has it; the poet has it; the great originative 
scientist has it who breaks with the scientific tradi- 
tion of his day and, like Darwin or Galileo, blazes 
new paths through the jungle of experience. But 
the established scientific technique does not have it 
and can not have it, because of its very nature. 
Now the question we want to raise is this. Can 
any such vast and elaborate scientific technique, as 
we see developing in the civilized world of today 
as never before in history, exist in our midst with- 
out greatly transforming our appreciation, our 
habits of response, our capacity for growth, for joy, 
and for fullness of life? Certainly a technique rap- 
idly accumulating from generation to generation, 
and becoming ever more pervasive in shaping our 
habits, appreciations, and outlooks, can not be 
without effect. What effect will it have? The 
answer to that question has already been given. The 
effect it must have is revealed in the very nature 
of scientific methodology or technique. It impover- 
ishes the world of experience. It destroys the ca- 
pacity to appreciate the “‘surplusage’’ of experience. 


3 = - 


SS 


AND SCIENTIFIC METHOD 187 


What does that mean? This surplusage of experi- 
ence means all those data, and all that unanalyzed 
datum, which is irrelevant to our established scien- 
tific theories, but is indispensable to the develop- 
ment of any radically new theories and the solution 
of very different and more complex problems that 
are bound to arise with an evolving civilization. 
It means, furthermore, all that concrete and scien- 
tifically meaningless, experience which makes seven- 
eighths of the joy of living—a lover’s kiss, the 
colors of the sunset, a child’s soft little hands, the 
heart of a rose. 

Yes, but, you answer, our scientific technique 
has not destroyed in us the capacity to enjoy the 
bits of concrete experience just mentioned. Of 
course not. We could not illustrate our point with 
experiences we had ceased to appreciate. The only 
point is this: Does scientific technique have any 
effect upon human life? And, if so, what effect? 
It seems there can be but one answer. It vastly 
magnifies our efficiency in procuring anything we 
want and have the capacity to enjoy; but it greatly 
diminishes our capacity to enjoy. It gives us won- 
derful instruments of achievement, but narrows and 
distorts our vision of what is to be achieved. 

But there is art and religion to correct this one- 
sided development of science. Exactly. The more 
science advances, the more elaborate, constraining, 
and pervasive its technique becomes, the more we 
require art, religion, and the personal intercourse of 
love to save our souls. But while science has ad- 
vanced with leaps and bounds since the Middle 


188 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 


Ages, since the days of Greece and Rome, since the 
days of Thor and Brunhilde, have art and religion 
kept pace with it? Are art and religion more or 
less pervasive throughout our life in comparison 
with those days? Is scientific technique more or 
less pervasive? 

Are we asserting our case is hopeless? Not at 
all. We are simply pointing to what we believe 
is a manifest fact which must not be ignored and 
can be corrected if we face it. We must turn to 
the cultivation of art and, above all, religion for 
salvation. toni 


. 


Chat LEKhey 11 
AWARENESS AND SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERY 


The first step in widening the range of knowl- 
edge is to open the mind to fact. By fact we mean 
not objects but the passage of nature, the undis- 
criminated occurrence with all its merged qualities 
and undistinguished relations. The first step is not 
to open the mind to objects because that cannot be 
done. To discern objects is the last step, not the 
first, in widening knowledge. We cannot discover 
new objects until after a process of theorizing and 
experimentation. We must form theory after 
theory until we have hit upon the right one, and 
we must perform experiment after experiment until 
we get the one that will adequately test that right 
theory. Only then do we discover the object with 
scientific certainty. We cannot, therefore, open the 
mind to objects at once. But we can to some de- 
gree open the mind to sense awareness, which is 
the first step in acquisition of knowledge by scien- 
tific method or by the methods of common sense. 

But it is by no means a simple and easy matter 
to open the mind to novel sense awareness. It is 
probably as difficult, and certainly as important, 
as anything else in the total process of scientific 
discovery. It is sometimes thought that all we need 


189 


190 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 


to do is to stare in order to become aware of the 
whole movement of nature in that particular quar- 
ter to which our perception is turned. But such is 
not the case. Our observation of an event is cribbed 
and cabined to the narrowest limits by the tradi- 
tional concepts which shut us into a recognition 
of only those few scattered objects in time and 
space which the demands of biological welfare and 
the cultural history of our people have forced upon 
our attention. The rest of that total happening 
which is going on about us all the time, we ignore. 
Our minds are shut in by a vicious circle. We or- 
dinarily cannot become aware of anything save 
what these traditional concepts define for us; and 
we cannot ordinarily develop new concepts with- 
out becoming aware of something new. 

This difficulty of widening the bounds of aware- 
ness must not be confused with another difficulty 
which has received much more attention—the diffi- 
culty of thinking. It is difficult to theorize with 
caution, to learn to devise adequate experimental 
tests and to withhold judgment until the tests have 
been sufficient. [That is the difficulty of scientific 
method; that is the difficulty of transforming 
awareness into knowledge. But there is the prior 
difficulty of becoming aware of anything new. We 
must first observe that which will suggest a prob- 
lem before we can employ our powers of thinking 
for its solution. It is possible to have great power 
and technique in thinking, but no awareness of 
novel fact upon which to exercise this power and 
technique. The scholastics of the Middle Ages give 


AND SCIENTIFIC METHOD 19] 


us an example of this. —The Greeks themselves were 
prone to this weakness, although they were prob- 
ably more receptive to concrete fact than any other 
people of their time. The scientific technique of 
any time may be threatened by this limited range 
of awareness. 

There are rare individuals whose awareness 
breaks free of the bonds of tradition to a degree 
much beyond that of others. The scientific genius 
and discoverer is not only a great thinker. He is 
more. He is aware of happenings which others 
ignore. The mystic may not be a thinker at all, 
but if he is mystic in the sense we have defined the 
term, his awareness of fact may be immense. The 
artist and the aesthete has a widened and sensitive 
awareness. The prophet, the seer, the lover, are 
aware of more than the ordinary hard-headed prac- 
tical man who is solely concerned with fitting into 
the mechanism of the social system. 

To make new, revolutionary discoveries, to turn 
human investigation of nature into new regions, as 
Thales did, as Copernicus and Kepler and Newton 
and Galileo and Pasteur and Darwin and Harvey 
did, one must take note of that which lies round 
about, but. which we have not been taught to ob- 
serve by the established theories of science nor by 
traditional common sense. We do not mean to say 
that such open awareness will itself alone lead to 
the discovery of new objects. It is only part of the 
process of discovery. But it is one indispensable 
part. However helpless awareness may be without 
concepts, concepts are equally helpless without 


192 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 


awareness, This teaching of Kant still holds true. 
But when open awareness is combined with the 
disciplined habits of scientific investigation, we have 
those flashes of insight that lead to the theory of 
gravitation, or the heliocentric solar system, or 
that bodies fall with the same speed regardless of 
weight. 

But when open awareness is not combined with 
trained and efficient powers of thought it not only 
fails to yield new knowledge, but may destroy 
efficiency in making adaptation to environment. 
For efficiency in any given social system generally 
requires that one react in the ordinary way to those 
objects which society in general recognizes. If any 
one’s excess of awareness causes him to ignore these 
objects, or to react to them in a different way, he 
is likely to become socially inefficient with respect 
to the impersonal social adaptation. 

The aesthete and mystic are sometimes of this 
sort. Even when such persons have retained their 
practical common sense, their widened awareness 
has not always enabled them to contribute any- 
thing of value to the common good, except the 
good of testifying to the possibility of this wider 
awareness. This living testimony of the mystic, 
however, may itself be a great good and he has 
sometimes been esteemed for this alone. But he 
has also for the same reason been an object of con- 
tempt. If the aesthete is an artist as well as an aes- 
thete, if he is not only widely and richly aware, but 
is also master of the trick by which to transmit his 
awareness to others, he may, with good fortune, 


AND SCIENTIFIC METHOD 193 


receive his social reward. But no doubt many aes- 
thetes are not artists. Furthermore, this creative 
work of the artist is very different from the crea- 
tivity of scientific discovery. The artist does not 
necessarily add anything to human knowledge nor 
help others to do so. If no theory is applied to 
those added regions of experience which he brings 
to light, and if these forms and qualities are not 
relevant to any theory that is likely to occur to 
mortal mind because of the bias given to human 
minds by the demands of biological welfare and 
the past history of culture, then this increment of 
awareness is worthless to all scientific discovery, 
however illuminating it might be to minds with a 
different biological bias and cultural history. But 
that certainly does not mean that it has no human 
value. To be more widely aware, as the aesthete 
and the mystic are, is a great human good. It is 
the independent good of art and religion. Let not 
the practical and theoretical mind deride it, lest they 
destroy the good of their own practice and theory. 

Since the mystic and the aesthete have often had 
no concepts with which to define their experience, 
cognize it, or communicate it, their raptures have 
sounded like raving foolishness. Being unable to 
contribute any good to the common welfare, save 
the good of their own enthusiasm and rapture over 
that which enters their awareness, they have some- 
times been looked upon with contempt. But do 
they not testify to the value of that which is im- 
mediately given to those who have eyes to see and 
ears to hear? 


194 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 


This living testimony of the religious seer, with 
his rhapsodies and incoherent utterances, has some- 
times rendered him very precious to certain simple 
folk who are glad to know that there can be such 
awareness even though they themselves cannot enter 
into it. But such simple folk are attracted to the 
mystic generally because they themselves have the 
glimmerings of such a widened awareness, enough 
to make them realize that other eyes may see what 
their dim eyes cannot behold. They are glad to 
know that there is something beautiful or holy 
here in their midst, even though it be withholden 
from their own awareness. And they are simple 
folk, often, precisely because they have just enough 
of this widened awareness to distract their attention 
and interest from those practical pursuits and scien- 
tific theories which lead to social success. 

Now, of course, any awareness that cannot be 
communicated and tested will offer a great oppor- 
tunity for tricksters and quacks, and these have no 
doubt often availed themselves of the Opportunity. 
But the very nature of simple awareness makes this 
inevitable, and the existence of such quacks cannot 
disprove the genuineness of such awareness on the 
part of some. Indeed, it is because more or less of 
this awareness exceeding the bounds of common 
sense is so wide spread that these quacks have so 
much success. The people who are duped are often 
those who have just enough of the vision in them- 
selves to make them readily believe one who claims 
to have more of the same thing. But are these 
“dupes’’ to be pitied more than the hard-headed 


a 


AND SCIENTIFIC METHOD 195 


individuals who never glimpse anything in heaven 
or earth, save those few clear cut bits of natural 
furniture which common sense has so definitely set 
up as the whole world in which we live and amid 
which they have learned to live with almost as 
much comfort and stolid contentment as the beasts. 
It is not they who are likely to be deceived by a 
false prophet, but those who have glimpsed that 
which the prophet claims to see. 

This awareness of which we speak must not 
be confused with idle dreaming or phantasy. The 
most natural thing for the ordinary human is to 
dream, which is neither thinking nor awareness, but 
a muddle of the two. In this state we do not open 
the mind to the fullness of immediate experience, 
but rather our awareness is obscured and distorted 
by the reverie. Awareness is sometimes called in- 
tuition. Rignano speaks of the part it plays in 
scientific discovery. “....in case of really new 
discoveries concentration is as a rule an impedi- 
ment. In this domain intuition and chance are 
always the reigning powers and the unexpected 
flash of insight of a genius is of greater value than 
untiring reflection and pertinacity.’’* 


Further on he says: 


But if we find that intuition as opposed to 
“attentive” observation or ‘“‘pondered reason- 
ing,’’ has the drawback of being much more 
subject to danger of error, it has nevertheless a 
much greater probability of yielding entirely new 
truths, Clearly what is necessary for these new 


1 Rignano, E., The Psychology of Reasoning, p. 127. 


196 


RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 

truths to appear is first “imagination,” that is, a 
mind that is capable of bursting through the 
boundaries of ordinary associations. An observer, 
for instance, not possessed with this power, never 
would have perceived in a swinging lamp any- 
thing but qualities that are quite ordinarily per- 
ceived, the material of which it was made, its 
shape, the carvings which adorned it and such like 
things. But even Galileo himself would not have 
discovered the isochronism of the oscillations if 
he had not just at this moment luckily been seized 
by an affective preoccupation concerning the meas- 
urement of time. This preoccupation, was, as 
far as it concerned the lamp, of a totally new 
kind, and it would not have been born if Galileo, 
stimulated by one of the ordinary affective in- 
terests relating to the lamp (an artist’s xsthetic 
interest, a verger’s interest in making sure that it 
had not gone out, or that it was not too dusty) 
had been examining it with attention. Similarly 
the playful imagination of a Faraday needs to 
give itself an entirely free hand, without being 
checked at every turn by the incessant limitation, 
exclusion and control, exercised by both the affec- 
tivities of a strong state of attention. 

Thus we see not only the usefulness, but the 
absolute necessity of a continual alternation be- 
tween intuition and reflection, If this latter has 
need of the former to escape from the grave danger 
of sterility; intuition in its turn has need of re- 
flection to control and prove the validity of each 
of the new observations or discoveries that it 
makes or thinks it makes at each new free flight 
of imagination.? 


2 foc. cit. pp. 129, 130. 


ee 


AND SCIENTIFIC METHOD poy 


Human creativity consists in bringing together 
these two sides of discovery, open awareness on the 
one hand and theorizing on the other—with its 
analysis, discrimination, definition and experimen- 
tation. When these two are united and rightly bal- 
anced, human life leaps forward like an open spill- 
way or a hound unleashed. Life becomes suddenly 
and marvelously abundant. When these two are 
brought into fruitful interaction, the richness of 
the world and the fertility of life is shown to be 
amazing. The artist, the prophet, the moral and 
social reformer, the scientific genius, the religious 
seer, all rise up in numbers and power when aware- 
ness of the wide, rich, novel fullness of concrete 
experience can be combined with the scientific 
method. But wide open mysic awareness flounders 
helplessly and blindly when unassisted by scien- 
tific method. And scientific method becomes a bar- 
ren definition of concepts without yielding any- 
thing to enrich life when not supported by open 
awareness. 

So we come back to our original question: How 
can open awareness be cultivated? Often it is not 
cultivated at all, but is a gift of nature, and in 
extreme cases a mark of genius. But it can be cul- 
tivated and is cultivated in the forms of art, love 
and worship. It cannot, as we have seen, be at- 
tained by concentrated attention and methods of 
efficiency. But it can be, and is, attained in the ways 
mentioned. The awareness attained in art, love and 
worship may have no value for scientific theory. 
That depends upon how the two are adjusted to 


198 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 


one another. But even when open awareness has 
no value for practice and theory, it has great human 
value. Few would question the value that proceeds 
from awareness of the beautiful, the beloved and 
the divine. Science needs to be supplemented and 
counterbalanced by these three, even if they did 
nothing directly to contribute to scientific discov- 
ery. But they may also contribute to scientific dis- 
covery under favorable conditions. 

We shall make a brief study of aesthetic and re- 
ligious experience in order to show how these cul- 
tivate awareness, and to further show the nature 
and value of this awareness and its rightful place 
Over against scientific method. 

In aesthetic experience we find a more or less 
vo uminous flow of sensuous awareness. In music 
there is a flow of sound, the rhythm serving to 
keep this stream of immediate experience within 
the bounds of awareness. The stream may be 
analyzed into distinct data, but in aesthetic appre- 
ciation these data form a unity or continuum. If 
there is a complete cessation of the sound it is aes- 
thetic only when it serves to accentuate the con- 
tinuity of the experience that has just been going 
on and will shortly be resumed, thus making more 
vivid and comprehensive one’s awareness of the 
unity. The breaks and variations are only suffi- 
cient to hold the experience continuously and in 
its wholeness within awareness. 

Playing over the surface of the sound, or merged 
with it, there may be fancies, ideas, even intricate 
logical processes. The music may suggest these. We 


AND SCIENTIFIC METHOD MEL 


believe generally there is some such free play of 
fancy. But the body of the aesthetic experience must 
be this stream of immediate awareness; and nothing 
else than this is required for a genuine aesthetic 
experience. There may well be ideas but they must 
suggest and maintain the flow of sensuous experi- 
ence, not suppress it from awareness as they do in 
ordinary discourse. 

But art consists just as much in excluding from 
awareness a large portion of the total occurrence 
of nature as it consists in bringing to vivid awareness 
that particular portion which constitutes the work 
of art, for instance the music. Art is thus both 
negative and positive in opening the mind to the 
events. Artistic genius consists just as much in ex- 
cluding certain elements from consciousness as in 
admitting others. It would seem that this work of 
exclusion is so important because otherwise aware- 
ness could not be held constantly receptive. If 
anything else were admitted to the magic unity it 
would dissolve and break up into the data of or- 
dinary selective attention which admits only those 
meager features which are of practical significance. 
The stream of sensuous experience would fade out, 
leaving only those discrete elements that signify the 
objects of common day. Art, then, must be very 
highly selective, but in a manner exactly opposite 
to that of ordinary life. Ordinary selective atten- 
tion has been built up by traditions of common 
sense within such narrow limits that it is now dif- 
ficult to recover any awareness of continuous ex- 
perience, except by means of skillfully wrought 


200 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 


works of art. There is that much truth (and error) 
in the oft heard statement that beauty is the vision 
of reality; it is our awareness of some event in its 
wholeness before it has been broken up into sep- 
arate elements and considered piecemeal as the ana- 
lytic mind is prone to do. 

Religious experience differs from the aesthetic 
in that it is not awareness of some work of art. 
Of course, works of art may be used to bring on 
the worshipful attitude, but awareness must include 
more than the artistic production; it must be re- 
ceptive to some more inclusive event, ultimately to 
that totality which is the “‘operative present . . . 
urging nature forward” including ‘“‘the whole, in 
the remotest past as well as in the narrowest breadth 
of any present duration.’’ Of course aesthetic ex- 
perience may be directed upon some aspect of na- 
ture and not a work of art. But it is more limited 
in scope than is the religious awareness. There may 
be, however, all degrees of transition from the 
aesthetic to the religious and back again. There are 
aesthetic experiences that border on the religious, 
and religious experiences that border on the aes- 
thetic. 

We have spoken of music as our example be- 
cause, in a certain sense, it can be called the purest 
form of art. But the same principles apply to other 
forms. In painting the selected portion of experi- 
ence brought to awareness is a blending of colors 
in such form that they can be held in awareness 
as a single continuous experience. This awareness 
is generally much enriched and made more vivid 


AND SCIENTIFIC METHOD 201 


if the proper ideas are suggested, and in most paint- 
ing such ideas are suggested. But if the ideas be- 
cloud, break into, or distract from appreciation of 
the sensuous fullness of that which is presented in 
the art, the appreciation is not aesthetic and we miss 
the art in so far as it may be there. 

In poetry we have a still more complex form of 
art. Here the stream of experience must be brought 
to awareness, first by reviving masses of past ex- 
perience, and, secondly, by delivering these masses 
to awareness as an indivisible unity. This is done 
by the suggestiveness of words and rhythm. Here 
ideas play a larger part than in music or painting. 
When masses of experience must be revived from the 
past, ideas are necessary to a degree that they are 
not when the experience can be provided in the 
immediate environment. There seems to be no 
other effective way of reviving past experience, ex- 
cept by means of ideas. But the ideas must always 
be subordinated to the function of sustaining this 
stream of revived experience before attentive con- 
sciousness. On the other hand, this stream of ex- 
perience may well give a pungency and otherwise 
unwordable significance to the ideas. But always it 
is art only as there is this massive body of sensuous 
experience presented to awareness. 

De La Mare’s Listeners will serve as an example 
of such art. 


“Ts there anybody there?’’ said the traveller, 
Knocking on the moonlit door, 

While his horse in the silence champed the grasses 
On the forest’s ferny floor, 


202 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 


And a bird flew up from the turret 

Above the traveller’s head. 

And he smote the door a second time: 

“Is there anybody there?’ he said. 

But no one descended to the traveller. 

No head from the leaf fringed sill, 

Leaned over and looked into his grey eyes, 

Where he stood, perplexed and still. 

But only a host of phantom listeners, 

That dwelt in the lone house then, 

Stood listening in the quiet of the moonlight, 

To that voice from the world of men; 

Stood thronging the faint moon-beams in the 
dark stair 

That goes down to the empty hall, 

Hearkening to an air stirred and shaken 

By the lone traveller’s call. 

And he felt in his heart their strangeness, 

Their stillness answering his cry, 

While his horse moved cropping the turf, 

"Neath the starred and leafy sky. 

For suddenly he smote the door again, even 
louder, 

And lifted his head. 

“Tell them I came and no one answered, 

That I kept my word,” he said. 

But never a stir made the listeners, 

Though every word he spake 

Fell echoing through the shadowiness 

Of the lone house, from that one man left awake, 

Aye, they heard his foot on the stirrup, 

And the sound of iron on stone, 

And how the silence surged softly backward, 

When the plunging hoofs were gone. 


AND SCIENTIFIC METHOD 203 


Here we have concrete experience brought to 
our awareness by reference to certain objects, and 
this experience is presented as a unity, partly by 
means of the rhythm, but more by means of a vague 
idea that runs throughout, too obscure to divert 
attenion from the stream of experience, but suff- 
ciently suggested to preserve the continuity of the 
whole. Above all, the idea is so presented that one 
seeks it in the suggested stream of experience rather 
than in the words or propositions of the poem. 
This is what the art of poetry requires. 

This balance between idea and stream of experi- 
ence is not often so artistically perfect as in this 
poem. It is very common for the idea to overbalance 
in the sense that one seeks for it in the verbal propo- 
sitions; and the idea may be so clearly and logi- 
cally developed, rather than merged in the sugges- 
tive symbolism, that the art fades out almost alto- 
gether. In other cases there may not be sufficient 
idea to revive and hold the stream of experience 
before awareness, but only a crackle of words. 

Something akin to both aesthetic and religious 
experience, perhaps midway between the two, is 
love. When two lovers are in one another’s pres- 
ence, especially in the early stages of unsophisticated 
love, there sometimes comes over them an over- 
whelming sense of simply being together. Their im- 
mediate awareness of this event is so absorbing, and 
it is so compact of concrete fullness, that they can- 
not think, analyze or discriminate. Simply to ex- 
perience the total fact involved in being together is 
all that they can ask; and to appreciate that in its 


204 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 


fullness requires all the powers of their minds. 
There is a flood of experience involved in this be- 
ing together, which may include much revived from 
the past as well as the immediately present. There 
is scarcely any distinct object cognized or purpose 
defined or motor attitude dominant. If the behav- 
iorist insists that there must be motor attitudes, we 
would reply that probably there are so many of 
them confused and merged that it is as though 
there were none at all for all practical purposes. 
There is no thought, or scarcely any, and little or 
no purpose; there is only that vivid awareness of 
the rich volume of fact involved in being together. 

The experience of the mystic in his communion 
with God is similar to this. 

So we have in the immediate experience of beauty 
and of love that which is closely akin to religious 
experience. ‘The latter differs from the other two 
in being awareness of a more inclusive event. In 
the experience both of beauty and of love, aware- 
ness is receptive to a wealth of experience far 
greater than that of ordinary life; but in both def- 
inite limits are set. In the aesthetic it would seem 
the limits are narrower than in the erotic. But in 
both the exclusion of incompatible elements is just 
as important as the inclusion of compatible; and 
in art especially is it plain that the technique is just 
as much concerned in excluding as in including. But 
in religious experience no such fixed limits are set, 
or none which we can be sure of. It is true that a 
certain religious tradition may confine religious 
awareness to certain fields of experience, or seem to 


AND SCIENTIFIC METHOD 205 


do so, but it is much more difficult to impose these 
limits upon the individual. In art these limits are 
very plainly prescribed because the experience is 
of certain definite and technically constructed ob- 
jects. In love the experience, while not so clearly 
defined, centers about one single definite human be- 
ing with certain specific characteristics; and while 
the experience of love is not merely of the other 
human organism but may include innumerable fea- 
tures of the whole environment, both present and 
past, nevertheless the whole experience centers in, 
and is controlled by, one’s awareness of this other 
human individual with all his limited and definite 
characteristics. But in religious experience there is 
no such limiting and defining object. In religious 
experience there are of course limits to the range of 
one’s awareness, but these limits are set by our own 
mental nature and not by the nature of the objects 
as is the case in beauty and love. Religious experi- 
ence is much less clearly defined and may be much 
richer in undiscriminated content. On the other 
hand, however, since its form and limits are not 
clearly defined, it may be much poorer in content. 
In other words, it may fluctuate without limit and 
without the constraint of any form. However, for 
the ordinary person, religious experience can scarcely 
be aroused, except by the presentation of some more 
or less definite form. Hence the indispensability of 
religious tradition, with its symbols, ceremonies, 
doctrines, institutions, distinctive philosophy, 
ethics and art. 

This awareness, which we say constitutes relig- 


206 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 


ious experience, should not be confused with emo- 
tion. Of course, there is likely to be emotion in 
it, just as when we experience a tree—‘‘woodman, 
spare that tree’’—or when we experience the “old 
oaken bucket.”” But that does not mean that the 
emotion is the same identical thing as the color, 
shape, coolness, etc., which we call the bucket. We 
experience certain sense data which enter into the 
constitution of the bucket or signify the bucket. 
The emotion is not a datum in the same sense as the 
color, shape, etc. There is plainly a distinction be- 
tween the data of experience and our emotional re- 
action to those data. 

Now this distinction holds just as truly when the 
experience entering awareness does not consist of 
discreet data, as in ordinary perception, but con- 
sists of that continuous flow of sensuous experience 
we have described as aesthetic or mystical. In the 
mystical experience all data are so merged that one 
can scarcely speak of any perception at all, but only 
of an undefined awareness. In such an experience 
it may be impossible to distinguish introspectively 
between the sensuous experience and the emotion, 
since neither is defined. But that there is a distinc- 
tion can scarcely be doubted. For, of course, the 
distinctions in experience hold whether we recog- 
nize them or not. 

Now when we are aware of this sensuous flow 
we are likewise, in many cases, aware of an emotion, 
although that is not necessary. But merged with 
the emotion, and possibly indistinguishable from 
it, is this flow of qualitied space-time signifying 


AND SCIENTIFIC METHOD 207 


God to the mystic. The emotional reaction to this 
datum must not be identified with the datum itself. 
In other words the event which is being experienced 
must be distinguished from the process of undergo- 
ing the experience, which latter might be called the 
percipient event, after Whitehead. 

‘There are several reasons why the datum of re- 
ligious experience should be so commonly consid- 
ered subjective, or confused with emotion. In the 
first place, it is not analyzed and broken up into 
separate data and set in a framework of space-time 
relations, as our ordinary objects of perception are. 
On the contrary it is an experience of the continuous 
flow of space-time with its innumerable qualities 
merged into an undifferentiated mass, not because 
the discreet qualities are lacking, but because these 
are not analyzed out, but allowed to continue in 
their natural original state of mergence with many 
other qualities, most of which we have never 
learned to discriminate. 

In the second place, our awareness of this flow 
of experience is ordinarily very dim, fluctuating, 
fading off into total unconsciousness, and therefore 
the emotional reaction is proportionately much 
more vivid and distinct as compared to the other 
elements in the total experience. Consequently, in 
retrospect it will be the emotion rather than the 
other data which will come to mind, especially since 
there are no distinct and discreet data to be held in 
memory. 

In the third place, and most important of all, 
there is no well defined concept of that which is 


208 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 


experienced, and hence no means of clearly thinking 
or cognizing the object ingredient in the total event 
experienced. 

As emotion has been given an undue place in 
religious experience, so has the subconscious. Let us 
try to define the place of the subconscious in it. 

When we become aware of that total fact which 
yields the religious experience, we respond. This 
response may include an uprush of previously sup- 
pressed impulses. This may give rise to an efflores- 
cence of phantasy, vision, photisms, contortions, 
and illusions, along with occasional flashes of pro- 
found insight and visions which may later be dem- 
onstrated to contain much truth. For instance, the 
truth that we can overcome evil with good and can 
conquer our enemies with love, may well have been 
discovered in such flashes of insight. This exuber- 
ance of the imagination is found in the records of 
many mystics. 

While the source of this fire works of fancy 
may be certain impulses hitherto suppressed, the 
important question for us is: What releases these 
impulses from the latent or suppressed state? What 
we experience religiously is not these suppressed 
impulses, but it is that which so stimulates us as 
to arouse these latent impulses. The significant 
thing in religious experience is that object which 
produces such a response. This uprush from the 
subconscious is an incidental by-product. What 
we experience is not primarily the subconscious, but 
it is that which produces this response of the sub- 
conscious. 


AND SCIENTIFIC METHOD 209 


We feel there is no more dangerous misinter- 
pretation of religious experience than to represent 
it as ‘‘subjective.’’ Our whole point has been to 
show that it is an experience of something not our- 
selves. Our reason for connecting it with the ex- 
perience of beauty and love has been to show that 
the same problem is involved in them; and it has 
seemed to us that a consideration of the three to- 
gether would help to show that in each there is 
something not ourselves which we experience. 

In appreciating music the beautiful sound is not 
something “inside the soul.’’ It is just as much 
out there in the world of space-time as is the loco- 
motive whistle that warns us to get off the track. 
We may react to the locomotive whistle with all 
sorts of inner spasms, tensions, and glandular proc- 
esses, yielding a tumult of emotion. But the sound 
with all its qualities is there in the world of sense. 
The same is true of that which we experience in 
love and in worship. In these latter we may not 
so definitely cognize the object signified by the 
datum, but the object is “‘out there’’ just as much 
as the locomotive and its whistle. 

It has been said that art is a flight from reality; 
that it does not reveal the world of fact, but leads 
us into a fictitious realm where we can satisfy our- 
selves with dreams. There are two senses in which 
this may be taken. 

In the first place, in so far as the beautiful ob- 
ject is a construction of human wit and so a re- 
making of things as they are, it is a flight from 
things in their raw state to things as artificially 


210 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 


constructed. But in the same sense a bridge or 
railroad or a stone wall is a flight from reality, 
since it is a transformation of nature from its raw 
state. But I think that is somewhat of a reductio 
ad absurdum. The beautiful thing, when con- 
structed, is now a fact made of clay or wood or 
sound or color or what not; and its beauty is there 
to behold as much as the bridge is there to use. 

But a great deal of beauty, by far the greater 
portion of it, we believe, is not a construction of 
human wit. It is nature in its rawest state; a sun- 
set or a mountain peak, for instance. Aesthetic ap- 
preciation in such cases is the most immediate con- 
fronting of reality and accepting of it. It is the 
most complete exposure of our sensitivity to the 
impact of that which is. 

But in this respect the religious experience ex- 
ceeds the aesthetic, for the object of religious con- 
sciousness is never properly the construction of 
human wit, as the beautiful object often is. In 
religious experience we confront and accept the 
immediate deliverance of all our sensitivity; we ex- 
pose ourselves most completely to the impact of 
fact in its rawest and most massive form. 

There is, however, a second sense in which it 
can more truly be said that art is a flight from real- 
ity; or rather there is a form of art which is so. 
There is an art which is sentimental and romantic. 
Its beauty consists not so much in that which is 
presented to the senses as in the fancies it suggests. 
There is a great deal of that sort of “‘art,’’ especially 
in recent times. But it is a great mistake to think 


AND SCIENTIFIC METHOD 211 


that all art is of this kind; and certainly a still 
greater mistake to think that all beauty is of this 
sort. 

What has been said of beauty applies also to 
love. There is a sentimental love which is blind, 
which is a flight from reality, and little else than 
phantasy. It consists in dreaming of an “‘ideal,’’ 
loving that ideal and using a human person to 
symbolize that ideal without any great regard to 
the true nature of the individual so used. But such 
sentimental love is not the only kind there can be. 
There is a love which consists in response to the 
total individuality of the beloved. The beloved 
opens the gates of awareness to the lover, and the 
latter becomes aware of a concrete fullness of fact 
that could never enter his awareness if he did not 
love. 

When we come to religion we find also these two 
kinds, as we do in the aesthetic and in love. There 
is a “‘religion’’ which is flight from the facts of 
experience and there is a religion which is the most 
complete opening of awareness to the total fact 
of immediate experience. 

But there are many defenders of religion, by no 
means sentimentalists, who insist that the experi- 
ence is ‘‘within,’’ and not a matter of sense at all. 
Many mystics are very emphatic in such declara- 
tions. We believe this seeming divergence from 
the view we are presenting arises from a difference 
in the usage of words. Sense has been used to desig- 
nate the data of selective attention by which we 
perceive the objects of ordinary life. Hence when 


Like RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 


attention does not thus select it is thought that 
sensation does not apply. Certainly sense data 
apprehended as signifying the ordinary objects of 
daily life is not the usual way of experiencing God. 
But when we follow up the teaching of the mystics 
we find that their experience is a matter of sense, 
if we understand by sense that sort of awareness 
we have been describing. 


As an example of the assertions of a mystic who 
denied that sense is a way to God, let us consider 
the statements of Rufus Jones. In speaking of re- 
ligious experience he says: “‘But there is no denying 
that we are moving now in another field from that 
of sense-facts and we cannot get the same coeffi- 
cients and common denominators that mark group 
experience in the well-known frameworks of space 
and time.’’® 


It is certainly true that mystic experience is very 
different from “‘group experience’ and the percep- 
tions of the herd with their “‘well-known frame- 
works of space and time.’ This well-known 
framework of space and time consists of certain 
abstract features carefully selected from out of total 
fact by the experimental methods of common 
sense working through centuries of transmitted tra- 
dition, and now at last set up as the total world of 
sense objects, when in truth they constitute only 
dots and dashes discriminated from the total hap- 
pening. This well-known framework of space and 
time consists of chunks of empty spaces, regions 
of nothing and regions of something. And its 


3 Fundamental Ends of Life, p. 114. 


AND SCIENTIFIC METHOD pai 


sense-facts are selected from the stream of ex- 
perience because of their utility in guiding the 
operation of certain established and useful habits. 
But to say all this does not mean that the 
mystic experience has nothing to do with sense 
and space-time. On the contrary three short 
pages further on from the above quotation we find 
Rufus Jones saying what is most typical of the 
statements of all mystics and implies all that we 
have said about their experience. 


“We are these strange eternity-haunted beings 
just because we are conjunct with God whom some 
of us at least discover walking with us in the cool 
of the day, as the fish feels the ocean or the bird 
the air.” 


What more intelligible account of such an ex- 
perience can be given than the fusing of the total 
sensitivity of the organism in awareness of that 
which is given in immediate experience! But Rufus 
Jones, like so many mystics, claims that we cog- 
nize self, other human selves, and God in some 
other way than by sensuous experience. 


We not only look out upon the objects which 
occupy space, and deal with them through ten 
special senses (we used to say five) but we further 
discover by an “‘inward ho’’ that we have an in- 
side existence of our own—an inner self. We come 
upon it by a flash of insight which our senses can 
not explain. . . . Not only so, but we also by a 
similar act of the unified inner self acknowledge and 
appreciate spiritual centers ia the persons around 
us. In doing this we vastly transcend all reports 


214 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 


of our senses. We overleap everything we see 
and touch . . . The mystic does not stop with 
these two ways of transcending sense experience 

He holds that it is possible to have direct, 
first- hand experience of God—the Spiritual Pres- 
ence in whom we live our own spiritual lives and 
who is the potential environment of all personal 
selves. It is possible for the sensitive soul to feel 
the pulse-beat of the Eternal Heart . . . The 
mystic claims that the human soul is bosomed on 
the deeps of a spiritual sea of Life which flows 
around it, and that the sensitively adjusted life 
can catch intimations of celestial currents and can 
gain clues and hints of direction, even when the 
cruder senses make no reports and give no guidance. 


Now all this we feel to be profoundly true and 
it can be accepted on its face value with our inter- 
pretation of the mystic experience. But to deny 
that sense and space-time have anything to do with 
his experience of God is to throw all these claims 
of the mystic into a region where modern thought 
and scientific method can make no connection with 
them. No matter how conciliatory toward science 
the mystic may be, he is irrevocably estranged from 
all scientific method as long as he makes this denial. 
Mysticism and scientific method need one another 
for reasons already stated. But as long as the mys- 
tic insists that his experience has nothing to do 
with sense and space and time, the two can only 
gaze at one another across a great abyss. 


CHAPTER VIII 
REBIRTH VERSUS AUTO-SUGGESTION 


Philip Cabot, in his recent book, Except Ye Be 
Born Again, recounts his own experience of rebirth. 
He tells of his failing health, worries, failure to dis- 
cern any value in the continuance of life, yet grimly 
clinging to it. He tells of retiring to a solitary place 
and spending many days, reading and thinking 
until there gradually came to him a sense of the 
divine presence, the annihilation of old habits, in- 
terests, purposes, views, a great sense of rest and 
peace, and the emergence, out of this state, into a 
wholly new way of life. 

He expressly contrasts this experience with that 
form of prayer which is auto-suggestion. He does 
not deny great value to this latter. Indeed, he says 
that this is the most common, and is indispensable 
to right living. He notes the fact that from time 
immemorial religious people have prayed early in 
the morning and late at night; and it is known that 
at these times subconscious processes are most 
readily accessible to conscious control. He says: 


The miraculous cures that have been accom- 
plished by disciples of mind-cure, Christian Sci- 
ence, and auto-suggestion, seem to me to result 
from a method which is in fact common to all 


215 


216 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 


of them, although it has been obscured by super- 
ficial differences which have been over-emphasized. 
Each of them has developed a formula or method 
by which the mind of the patient is concentrated 
on the conception of health, at times and in ways 
which successfully transfer this image to the seat 
of action in the subconscious. This concentration 
is the secret of their success, and I am tempted to 
believe that the miracles of healing of all times 
rest upon the same foundation. ‘The simplest and 
perhaps most effective example is the formula 
of M. Coué, repeated twenty times night and 
morning. 

Now it is impossible for me to doubt that if 
the same concentration can be achieved in Chris- 
tian prayer, similar but more far-reaching cura- 
tive results will be produced. I hold that the 
great problem for each of us in developing the 
technique of prayer is to ascertain exactly by what 
method such concentration upon the symbols of 
his faith can be produced in his individual. 


But he goes on immediately to contrast all this 
with that experience of God which is ‘‘the deepest 
form of worship.’” This deeper form of religious 
experience involves what he calls ““The Seeing 
Eye’ and the “Listening Ear.” Now this seeing 
eye and listening ear make up that distinctive form 
of religious experience which we have been trying to 
describe. In it we cease to respond to special stimuli 
but become responsive to the undifferentiated mass 
of innumerable stimuli that are playing upon us. 
We cease to distinguish and interpret special selected 
data but react to the concrete fullness of immedi- 


AND SCIENTIFIC METHOD 217 


ate experience, which is constantly pouring over us 
and through us, but which we ordinarily ignore. 

We believe it is exceedingly important to clarify 
the distinction between this “‘deepest form of wor 
ship’ and any form which, like auto-suggestion, 
seeks the fulfillment of already established wants. 
What this deeper form of worship does is not so 
much to satisfy our pre-existent wants, but to 
transform our wants. When this transformation is 
sufficiently radical we call it rebirth. And this we 
claim is the chief function of religion in human life, 
immeasurably more important than its service in 
helping to fulfill the wants which we bring to it. 
This function of rebirth has been too often ignored 
in studies of religion. Religion is treated as a device 
by which we satisfy our wants. But when it trans- 
forms our wants, it does just the opposite; it makes 
it impossible for us to satisfy our pre-existent wants, 
even to that degree that we were able to fulfill 
them by our own unaided efforts. It renders those 
old wants worthless. Of course, if we seek the ex- 
perience of God with the wish to be transformed, 
then that want is fulfilled. But that is very dif- 
ferent from what is ordinarily understood by ful- 
fillment of wants in prayer. 

Now this transformation of wants, this rebirth, 
is precisely what auto-suggestion cannot do, no 
matter how Christian or unchristian it may be. In 
auto-suggestion we have certain wants which we re- 
lease from inhibition and develop into efficient and 
persistent habits by the practices which go by that 
name. But these practices are successful just in 


218 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 


proportion to the definiteness with which we know 
what we want. Even when we say “‘getting bet- 
ter day by day’ we are seeking to satisfy certain 
established wants, the fulfillment of which consti- 
tute what we mean by getting better. And this most 
general formula is discarded for more specific state- 
ments whenever an individual case reveals the 
nature of these special wants. 

There is a kind of prayer, then, which can be 
brought under the general head of auto-suggestion, 
the state of mind which arises when we enter into 
the experience of God rendering auto-suggestion 
much more effective. It is plain that the breaking 
down of habitual attitudes and the release of free 
impulses in that diffusive stimulation of the total 
personality, which occurs in religious experience as 
we have described it is precisely the condition in 
which new habits can be formed and the impulsive 
resources of the individual organized about certain 
dominant wants. This is akin to auto-suggestion; 
and it is no less religious when called auto-sugges- 
tion, if it is practiced in that unique form of experi- 
ence which is distinctively religious. 

But it must be noted that this breaking down of 
established habits and attitudes and this melting 
down of the whole personality into a free play of 
impulses in response to the total mass of stimuli 
playing upon the individual, if it goes far enough, 
will wipe out those very wants which the individ- 
ual brings to the hour of worship for fulfillment. 
For a want is a motor set, a more or less effectively 
organized system of impulses. In that deliques- 


“~ 


AND SCIENTIFIC METHOD ALd 


cence of personality which occurs in the deeper 
reaches of worship, these may be melted down with 
all the others. As the individual rises up out of such 
a profound experience he may arise with a new self, 
meaning a system of impulses organized in a man- 
ner radically different from that which constituted 
his personality before the experience. And this re- 
Organizaion of impulses means a new outlook on 
life. It means attention to features which he previ- 
ously ignored. 

But the chief value of such profound religious 
experience is that it makes possible a unification of 
the personality. Systems of impulse, complexes and 
habits, which have hitherto been at cross purposes 
or dissociated from one another, are now fused into 
a single total system of impulse. It means that our 
habits, instead of being antagonistic or indifferent 
to one another, are now fully codperative. It means 
that the individual no longer must work against 
inner, mental friction. It means that he is made 
whole, according to the good old Christian term. 
And this unification of impulses fused into a single 
total system in which each element sustains every 
other, is blessedness, peace and power. 

This melting down, fusing and unifying of all 
impulses and habits, is something which the grow- 
ing personality requires periodically. It cannot be » 
done once and for all, because new impulses and 
habits are constantly arising; and as these multiply 
in adaptation to changing features of the environ- 
ment, they are bound to come into more or less con- 
flict with one another. Suppressions and dissocia- 


220 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 


tions will occur. The only way in which mental 
health can be preserved is by periodic melting down 
of these motor sets, and out of this deliquescence of 
habit into free impulses a new and unified system of 
response arises. 

Of course, when we speak of the melting down 
of habits into a free play of impulse, we speak in 
relative terms. How far the established character 
of the individual is resolved is a matter of degree. 
There are always left those nuclei of. habit around 
which the new system must be organized. If we 
could fix on those wants which are identified with 
these basic nuclei of our total individuality and 
about which all our lives must be organized if they 
are to be organized at all, then we might say that 
even this deepest kind of worship is a means for 
fulfilling our wants. Then worship becomes a proc- 
ess by which we dig down to the most basic wants 
of all human life and restore these wants to their 
rightful place as basis and center for the organiza- 
tion of all other wants. 

But this we cannot do by a purely meditative 
intellecual process. We cannot do it intellectually, 
for one thing, because we have not yet been able 
adequately to define the deepest wants of human 
living. There are many proposed definitions, of 
course, but there is no scientific verification that 
these statements of the basic human wants are cor- 
rect, and they contradict one another. But more 
important still, it cannot be done by any such 
purely intellectual process, because even if we did 
know what we most deeply wanted, we still could 


AND SCIENTIFIC METHOD 221 


not resolve our established system of habits to such 
a degree as to make possible their reorganization 
about these most basic wants. It is religious experi- 
ence alone which can do this adequaely. Other ex- 
periences do it to a degree, for instance the aesthetic 
and erotic. But none can do it sufficiently for the 
needs of life, save only the experience of God. 

But to clarify this religious function of rebirth, 
we mus give one or two instances of it. In the 
World Tomorrow, issue of December, 1923, is a 
careful and accurate record of a woman’s experi- 
ence, written by herself, from which we quote. It 
is anonymous, but we believe altogether authentic. 


My own longing to fall in love was partly 
gratified when I was twenty. I partly loved a 
young man of about my own age, He only partly 
loved me; and although we made a little love to 
each other, it was subject to chilling doubts, and 
recoils that overcame both our hearts, though not 
always simultaneously. I remember one summer 
afternoon lying alone on our cliffs and knowing 
a pure and perfect rapture of the body. But such 
a perfect sweetness seldom came; and I did all 
I could to kill with sentimentality my honest, 
sweet anemic little emotion. ; 

The war was the terrier that shook the whole 
rat of my life. From the time the soldiers went 
marching across the border to Mexico I was a 
pacifist. Even amid the fever of jingoism that 
seized upon the people here in the Southwest, I 
had been a pacifist, accordingly, for over a year 
when the Government escorted the United States 


Apes 


RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 


into the war. And to feel how my cowardice 
held me back from jail was a quiet little purga- 
tory to be in. . . . felt the same rending of 
the spirit, I suppose, that a young man must feel 
who thinks it is his duty to volunteer as a sol- 
dier, but who can’t muster the courage to do so. 
Jail, I knew, was where I belonged with my 
betters. To know this, and not to act upon it, 
was indeed penitential. 

Near the end of the war, my wincing prayers 
for courage ended suddenly in an afternoon of 
mystic illumination, the date and circumstances of 
which I could no more forget than a married 
woman could forget the season of her wedding. 
Indescribable such experiences always are, I sup- 
pose. Something melted in the core of my nature, 
and fused it all together. I felt a sense of creative 
power in some spiritual act which I suppose I must 
CAL PAVer on ca ie 

There was, I know, some close connection be- 
tween this experience and a love which from its 
first beginning made moonlight of the youthful 
one. This one is love. It makes even my social 
emotions seem timid, prefatory to social emotions 
yet to come, Whereas the youthful one had been 
requited a little, requited as much perhaps as it 
could bear, the new one is most utterly unrequited. 
Perhaps all the more for that reason, it swept 
away fears and forebodings from my whole life. 
It flooded my thoughts waking and asleep with 
incredible delight. It played unthought of music 
in secret on the strings of my sedate middle-aged 
personality. The first few years of it made me 
literally live in Paradise. 


AND SCIENTIFIC METHOD LL 


This was when I kept it clean with “prayer.” 
I still don’t know what else to call the faculty by 
which we escape from self by act of will. Since 
my illumination at the end of the war, I some- 
times relegate myself to its place as an infinitesimal 
part only of the universal life. Whenever my love 
grew dim and sentimental, it plainly had resulted 
from falling into thinking how to try to seem 
lovable or admirable to this man. But as long 
as I could throw all the my-ness of it to the winds 
of heaven for the whole fraternity of life to use— 
hopeless, isn’t it, to try to express these things, 
familiar as they become! Even I who write them 
can see how incoherent my words must sound. 

As long as I continued to practice this inde- 
scribable act of the heart, I lived in the extreme 
sweetness of delight. But my power in this prac- 
tice grew faint, and my love lost the brightness of 
its rising. It has relaxed, it is a little faint. I 
believe it will recover its freedom and vigor again. 
But it may be that its greatest days are gone, and 
will not return... . 

My darling love had made me deeply contented 
with age and death. It had made me feel pro- 
foundly, securely at home in the universe. Is it 
possible that the bliss of loving one lets us each 
foretaste the immeasurable bliss of loving all, 
which a long transit of the heart, through lives 
upon lives and deaths upon deaths, will finally 
bring? 


Here is where the new upsurging shattering 
response of love broke down the established system 
of habits and resulted in that experience, which is 


Lay RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 


responsiveness to the fullness of the event. This 
was the ‘‘afternoon of mystic illumination.’ She 
describes it most accurately when she says: “‘Some- 
thing melted in the core of my nature, and fused 
it all together.’”’ What did she experience in this 
state? What was the object being experienced? She 
says: “I felt a sense of creative power in some 
spiritual act, which I suppose I must call prayer.” 
Plainly the object of her experience was that which 
produced in her the religious attitude and had for 
her all the values of God. And out of his state of 
deliquescence of personality, there arose a new or- 
ganization of the self, a new meaning and purpose 
in living. She surrendered herself to “‘the whole 
fraternity of life to use.’’ She came to feel ‘‘pro- 
foundly, securely at home in the universe.’”’ 

It will be noticed that it was not love alone that 
brought on this state of mind. She had been under 
going a most severe conflict of responses, which 
threw all her habits into a state of instability. It 
only required the additional surge of a great new 
emotion of love to destroy the equilibrium of habits 
quite completely and reduce her to a state of total 
aliveness, but without definite attitudes, selective 
attention, or fixated forms of response, and so bring 
her to the afternoon of mystic illumination. 

Here we have that experience which we all along 
have described as uniquely religious. There is a 
reorganization of the total personality. There is 
a fusion of conflicting responses, a deliverance from 
those inhibitions, suppressions, fears and hesitancies 
which had hindered her living. The spontaneous, 


AND SCIENTIFIC METHOD 225 


exuberant, unhindered living that resulted was the 
result of such deliverance. It is the universal work 
of religious experience when sufficiently profound. 
It is the supreme function of religion in human life. 
It is something which auto-suggestion, and that 
worship which is akin to auto-suggestion, that wor- 
ship which comes to God with specific petitions, 
can never do. 


But let us take another instance of the same thing, 
this time from a young married man, as described 
by himself. We can vouch for the accuracy and 
truthfulness of the statement. 


I had been separated from my wife and chil- 
dren for over a year. I felt under compulsion to 
continue my studies but I must also support my 
family, and, if possible, have them with me in- 
stead of remaining where they were, half way 
across the continent. I could do this only if I 
could get a certain kind of work that could be 
carried along with my studies. I made several 
attempts to get such work but failed, Finally I 
received a tentative offer, providing I could make 
good. The first time I came I was very nervous, 
being worn with much study and having lived in 
much isolation in the attempt to complete the 
work for my degree. I did not do myself justice. 
I came a second time and at the close of the day 
was told that my employers were not satisfied with 
my services and that I could not have the position. 
It was nine o'clock at night at the time. I had 
to ride many hours on the interurban to reach my 
place of residence. I shall never forget that long 
ride of misery. It was after two o’clock A. M. 


226 


RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 


when I got into bed. I could not sleep although 
I was worn with nervous strain, the day’s work 
and disappointment. 

The hours of the night were almost unendur- 
able. Worse than the disappointment and failure 
to find a means of seeing again my family was the 
sense of my own worthlessness and futility. I 
felt completely beaten, It was total loss of self- 
confidence. It was not this last failure alone that 
overthrew me, but a series of experiences during 
the two previous years, which I had interpreted as 
failures. Because of these experiences I had been 
fighting the sense of failure and futility for some 
time. Now it rose up and crushed me quite com- 
pletely. I had no inclination to suicide (although 
the thought occurred to me), because it appeared 
to be about the meanest thing I could do toward 
those who were dependent upon me. But it 
occurred to me that if I had only myself to con- 
sider I should certainly have gladly welcomed any 
means of ending the misery and futility of it all. 

During the forenoon of the next day I at- 
tended to certain duties and in the afternoon 
returned to my room to face the facts as squarely 
and completely as possible and somehow find my- 
self. I felt there was something must be fought out 
and settled, although I couldn’t tell just exactly 
what it was. I suppose it was a vague sense that 
I must settle the problem of living my life and 
my relation to things in general. I felt there 
could be no rest for me until I settled things 
somehow. 

I spent about four hours in my room alone. 
It was not exactly thinking, nor exactly praying, 


AND SCIENTIFIC METHOD 227 


although at times it was one or another of these 
quite distinctly. Most of the time, I suppose, it 
was a sort of combination of these. Gradually 
there emerged within me a spreading sense of peace 
and rest. That almost unendurable pain of mind 
that had possessed me for twenty-four hours 
assuaged and passed away quite completely. I 
imagine it passed somewhat as a pain passes under 
an anesthetic. Then I found myself filled with 
a strange new exuberance. I was almost laughing 
and crying with joy. Joy about what? I could 
not tell. I only knew my pain was gone, and I 
was full of great gladness, courage and peace. All 
the facts were exactly as they had been and I saw 
them more plainly than ever. My family was 
still as far away as ever and there was no visible 
means of getting them any closer. My failure to 
. get the work I wanted, stood as it had before. 
I cannot say that I had any anticipation of how 
my difficulties might be overcome; I did not even 
have the feeling that they would be overcome. I 
simply knew that I was glad, and ready and fit 
to go ahead and do whatever I might find to do 
and take the consequences whatever they might be. 
There was no hysteria and no hallucination about 
it. The strong emotion of gladness gradually 
passed away in the course of days, but the courage, 
peace, readiness to meet any fortune with equa- 
nimity, and joy in living did not go away. The 
old anguish did not return. 


In the course of time I was able to have my 
family with me, but we spent the winter fighting 
to save the life of our youngest. For six weeks 
his life hung in the balance and for many days 


228 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 


we had to watch over him constantly day and 
night. At one time he lay apparently dead and 
was only restored by artificial respiration. Yet 
through all this the old feeling of dejection and 
failure never recurred. Instead a deep inner feel- 
ing of calm and divine presence was with me. In 
the years since then I have not kept to this high 
level, but I feel I have discovered the sources of 
infallible support in any time of need. 


Now this experience would be explained by some 
psychologists as a case revealing the “‘ambivalence”’ 
of personality. According to this theory, beneath 
the dominant attitude there is always a suppressed 
attitude. When the dominant attitude wears itself 
out by continuous exercise, it finally sinks into the 
subconscious and the opposite attitude takes its 
place. If the dominant attitude has been that of 
melancholy, the succeeding attitude is that of joy. 
And the more extreme the melancholy the more 
joyous will probably be the opposite attitude that 
succeeds it. This mechanics of balance is the law 
of the mind, according to this theory; and the one 
attitude succeeds the other by a natural law of the 
mind. 


Now it is certainly true that in those diseased 
minds which the psychiatrist studies there is always 
more or less extreme dissociation of opposite and 
conflicting attitudes. When one is dominant, the 
other is suppressed. And this suppression and con- 
flict to a less degree is found in all minds, although 
the more healthy the mental state, the less of it 
there is. We do not deny that such reversal of 


AND SCIENTIFIC METHOD 229 


dominant and suppressed attitudes occur. We only 
claim that when there is such dominance and sup- 
pression there is another way in which transforma- 
tion may occur besides that of the reversal of 
ambivalence. In this reversal there is no genuine 
change of character. There is no rebirth. There 
is simply change of place, as it were, of two con- 
trasting traits of the established and unchanging 
character. But besides this change of place, which 
certainly may occur, there is also such a thing as 
reorganization and fusion of such nature that the 
melancholy attitude with its characteristic impulses 
and conflicts, is not only suppressed, but is reor- 
ganized and fused in such a way that the total 
unified self emerges. This is rebirth and is a very 
different thing from mere substitution of one atti- 
tude for another. We believe the case mentioned is 
one of rebirth and not of substitution. However, 
until it be more adequately studied, there is room 
for doubt. But let us give a clear case of suppres- 
sion and substitution in order to contrast it with 
what we have described as rebirth. Both suppres- 
sion and rebirth are no doubt common occurrences 
in religious phenomena. But it is very important 
that they be not confused. 


The kind of conversion which we want to con- 
trast with rebirth might be called hypnoidal. To 
illustrate it we shall turn to fiction, a story in the 
Atlantic Monthly for July, 1924, called ‘‘The 
Devil’s Instrument.’’ While it is fiction, we be- 
lieve the reader will agree with us that this is a case 


230 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 


of fiction being truer to life than many a biographic 
account, 

Tim Messer is finally prevailed upon to go to 
the meeting house with Sam, his old companion 
in sin, but now a new convert. The house is 
packed, the singing overwhelming. The preacher 
portrays the end of the world, when smoke begins 
to roll and a voice “cries out from land to sea, 
“Time is no more! Time is no more!. . . Where will 
you be! Where will you be when that last trum- 
pet sounds. Sinner man, yea, you, Tim Messer, 
where will you be. You will cry for mercy and 
there will be no mercy.’ ”’ 

Tim felt his flesh freezing as the terrible picture 
grew. At last the preacher ended his description 
of Tim’s likely end by imitating the wails and 
screams that would rise to heaven when he lay in 
outer darkness. His yells and bellowings swept a 
score of listeners to their knees. Several little chil- 
dren were already writhing on the hay, and men 
were crying in different parts of the house. Here and 
there old women crouched at their seats agonizing 
over Tim’s soul. As if in a dream, he heard them 
mentioning his name. 

Then Brother Baxter (the preacher) turned to 
the table and drank deeply from the pitcher of 
water. He came back to Tim and pleaded with 
him in a gentle voice. 

At the sweetness of his words, Tim felt the hot 
tears go coursing down his leathery cheeks. 

Finally the preacher described how the devil 


AND SCIENTIFIC METHOD bea 


would come to get Tim’s soul as he lay on his 
death-bed. 


He’ll come in easy, oh, so easy, his tail making 
a grisly sliding sound on the floor. Then! [he 
roared, seizing the terrified Tim by the shoulders, | 
He’ll jump onto the bed and carry yer soul scream- 
ing to everlasting hell! 


In the story, which we cannot here quote in full, 
it is easy to trace the process of hypnosis, the dis- 
sociation of one set of impulses from the rest of 
the personality, the fulfillment of these, and the 
later conflict between these newly acquired habits 
and the old system of habits which still constituted 
the major portion of his character. There had been 
no breaking down and deliquescence of established 
habits with a reorganization of the total personality 
into a new and different system of habits. There 
was no rebirth. There was only dissociation and 
suppression. Certain impulses, which have been 
more or less dormant from childhood, or which 
may have been gradually maturing during the days 
preceding, were so stimulated at the meeting, and 
so dissociated from all counter impulses, that they 
were brought into control of conscious conduct, and ° 
for a time were able to hold all other habits in sup- 
pression. The revival meeting and the preacher 
were splendidly adapted to dissociate these im- 
pulses from the inhibitions of Tim’s established 
character, but they were not adapted to bring him 
into that experience which would transform his 
characer. 

In hypnosis and auto-suggestion we have disso- 


2Oz RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 


ciaion and suppression; in the profounder religious 
experience we have deliquescence of old habits and 
out of the resulting free play of impulses there 
arises a new, harmonious, unified self. 

William James notes these two ways in which 
the individual may be changed. He says in Varieties 
of Religious Experience:* 


There are only two ways in which it is possible 
to get rid of anger, worry, fear, despair, or other 
undesirable affections. One is that an opposite 
affection would overpoweringly break over us, and 
the other is by getting so exhausted with the 
struggle that we have to stop—so we drop down, 
give up, and don’t care any longer. Our emotional 
brain-centers strike work, and we lapse into a 
temporary apathy. Now there is documentary 
proof that this state of temporary exhaustion not 
infrequently forms part of the conversion crisis. 
So long as the egoistic worry of the sick soul 
guards the door, the expansive confidence of the 
soul of faith gains no presence. But let the for- 
mer faint away, even but for a moment, and the 
latter can profit by the opportunity, and, having 
once acquired possession, may retain it, Carlyle’s 
Teufelsdrockh passes from the everlasting No to 
the everlasting Yes through a “‘Center of In- 
difference.” 


James’ comment would seem to indicate there 
are two souls or systems of response, one the sick 
soul and the other the soul of faith, and that the 
soul of faith existed somehow down in the sub- 
liminal regions of the mind, suppressed and held 


loc. cit. p. 212. 


AND SCIENTIFIC METHOD 233 


there by the dominance of the sick soul, and when 
the latter became exhausted this soul of faith could 
spring forth from the subconscious and take pos- 
session of the individual. 

We believe this multiplication of souls and selves 
has been altogether overdone. We shall criticize 
this Freudian theory more fully in chapter XI. 
The “Center of Indifference’ may issue in the sub- 
stitution of one old self for another. But it may 
also issue in the fusion of old selves and the emer- 
gence of a new self. This latter eventuality has not 
been sufficiently recognized, even by James. 

We cannot have continuously the mystic experi- 
ence of God. The practical, biological and social 
requirements of living forbid it. To live we must 
have an efficiently organized system of habits. But 
such habits necessitate a very narrowly selective at- 
tention and a very rigid constraint of impulses. 
Our hope of growing into an ever more abundant 
life lies not in discarding all such systems with 
their limitations and constraints, their routine and 
cramping confinement, their deadening of spon- 
taneity and originality. No, we must continuously 
harness ourselves with such habits. Without them 
not only would all our efforts be wholly futile, but 
we would cease to have any definiteness of char- 
acter, of purpose, of thought and perception, of 
individuality. We would not even have that orig- 
inality and spontaneity which the system of habits 
seem to destroy. Without such habits there are only 
two alternatives before us. One is the stupor of pro- 
found sleep or total loss of consciousness, the mere 


294 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 


vegetative existence, due to the reduction of all 
response to the very fewest impulses. The other is 
the melting glow and exhilaration of the mystic ex- 
perience without definite thought or purpose, due 
to the increase of response through the multiplica- 
tion of free impulses so numerous and diverse as 
to prevent the organization and fulfillment of any 
of them. Between these two extremes lies the or- 
dinary human way of living with its established 
and indispensable habits. 

How, then, can we hope to grow into an ever 
more abundant life? Only by a method of alterna- 
tion between the mystic experience and the life of 
organized habit. To grow into an ever more abun- 
dant life we must discard the old self from time to 
time and take on a new self. We must cast aside 
the old system of habits and enter into a new sys- 
tem. We must break the old, ever hardening shell 
of habit and for a brief time live without a shell, 
palpitating and throbbing with the flood of ex- 
perience flowing over us. But then, in order to deal 
with experience at all, we must develop another 
shell of habits, develop and perfect it for a time until 
we have grown to its limit. Then we must again 
break through and expose our sensitivity to the 
full stream of experience, and out of the innumer- 
able new impulses thus aroused form another and 
better system of habits. Only so can we be lifted 
out of the ruts. But forthwith we must make 
new ruts if we are to travel at all. ‘These 
new ruts should enable us to travel further 
than the old ones. We must escape from ourselves 


a 


AND SCIENTIFIC METHOD Safer 


from time to time, in the experience of God: but 
we must come back to ourselves if we are to have 
any selves at all. But the self to which we come 
back should be a richer, greater self, because of this 
experience of God. Only in this way can the pano- 
tama widen forever about us. Only thus can the 
spirit of the little child, which grows eternally, re- 
tain the freshness and vitality which God has given 
it. To experience God is to turn and become as a 
little child. Hypnosis and auto-suggestion are the 
fine technique of old age: but experience of God 
is the rebirth of eternal youth. 


GHAL TERULS 


CHRISTIANITY AND SCIENTIFIC 
MORALITY 


Much has been said of late of the need of scien- 
tific method in morals. Conscience and moral en- 
deavor must be shaped by the deliverances of 
science. Scientific technique must be applied to set 
forth the essential needs of human living; to dis- 
tinguish between genuine and illusory wants; to 
ascertain what wants can be harmonized with one 
another and what cannot, and to devise a method 
for achieving this harmony. What sort of en- 
vironment, physical and social, do the essential 
interests of human living require? And what 
form and method must these interests assume in 
order to attain maximum fulfillment? These are 
questions which science alone can adequately an- 
swer; and they must be answered if we are to solve 
our moral problems. Unquestionably scientific 
method must be put into our morality and we can 
never have too much of it. 

But the same fatality which overcomes scientific 
method elsewhere, affects it when applied to the 
moral life. Scientific method is indispensable, but 
it is not self-sufficient. Scientific method can 
bring harmony and fulfillment to our wants but 

236 


i 


AND SCIENTIFIC METHOD Lf, 


it cannot to any great degree create in us a new and 
ticher system of wants such as we saw occurs in 
rebirth when God is experienced. It can bring 
maximum efficiency to our old self: but it cannot 
give us a new self. The more finely codrdinated 
becomes our social system, the more perfectly ad- 
justed to our needs becomes our physical environ- 
ment, under the prescriptions of science, the more 
firmly fixed and unchangeable become our interests. 
It is not that we lack the power to do what we 
will, but that we lack the vision to seek any other 
ends than those prescribed by this most efficient 
system of life which scientific method has estab- 
lished. The deepest craving of human nature is 
for growth, for ever increasing abundance. But 
scientific method cuts off growth. Such a finely 
adjusted life leaves nothing to develop save the per- 
fected system. This may be made more efficient 
and we may seek change and excitement by going 
round and round and round, faster and faster and 
faster. But we cannot escape the system. Why? 
Cannot science see this need also and provide for 
growth? Provide for escape from the system? 
No, we have already seen the reason why it can- 
not. It certainly widens the range of our interests 
in space and time. But it cannot create in us new 
interests. We do not now refer to the great crea- 
tive scientist, but to the effect of scientific technique 
upon the average run of scientists and upon the 
mass of mankind. 

The horror of this scientifically efficient life is 
beginning to creep over our civilization. It is be- 


238 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 


ginning to appear in fiction and essay. The novels 
of Sinclair Lewis portray it. It is reiterated in 
Mumford’s Story of Utopias. L. P. Jacks does 
not weary of declaring it. The restlessness and dis- 
content of great masses of people reveal it. There 
is a wave of discouragement and disillusionment 
passing over the world that is not altogether due 
to the after effects of the war. It is due to discern- 
ment, only half conscious, that the much-lauded 
progress brought on by scientific method, while 
undoubtedly progress in the sense of rendering us 
more efficient in satisfying our wants, fails to create 
in us an ever richer and fuller system of wants. It 
fails to lead us into an ever wider and fuller vision. 
This is what Chrisian mysticism must do. This 
is the chief contribution of Christianity to morals. 
It counteracts the inherent fatality involved in 
scientific method. 

A scientific morality can promote the develop- 
ment of such a system of habits in the individual. 
such a system of social order and such adjustment 
of physical conditions, as to give tolerable expres- 
sion to all recognized and worthy ideals. But it 
cannot give rise to radically new ideals. It cuts off 
the growing edge of life. With the help of the 
sociologist on the one hand and the psychiatrist and 
biologist on the other, the exact sciences can rem- 
edy to a large degree the evil of thwarted and sup- 
pressed impulses—save only that undefined human 
craving for an ever fuller life. 

We have already seen in the previous chapter 
how Christianity meets this deepest need of all and 


a 


AND SCIENTIFIC METHOD 209 


supplements scientific method. But let us go more 
deeply into this matter to show how scientific 
method in morals needs the support of Christianity. 


THE MORAL DYNAMIC OF CHRISTIAN WORSHIP 


Much has been said of the influx of power from 
the subconscious brought about through worship. 
The question has been asked whether this influx 
came from some source external to the individual, 
such as God, or whether it was the release of energy 
stored in the organism, and hence having its source 
internal to the individual. But such a question, 
we believe, shows a total misapprehension of the 
whole situation and of that basic relation called 
stimulus and response. As though the source of 
the energy must be either external or internal! Of 
course it is both. The energy of the total organism 
can be released only when the proper stimulus is 
applied. Is, then, the source of the energy the 
stimulus or the organism? It is both. The energy 
was unavailable for work until the stimulus was 
applied. It is the stimulus which renders the en- 
ergy dynamic. It is through worship that one 
exposes himself to that stimulus which is capable 
of awakening all the power of the individual and 
releasing the stored energy of the organism for 
work. Besides, organic activity of any kind always 
involves activity of the environment just as much 
as activity of the organism. For example the lungs 
cannot breathe apart from the air. The air does 
the breathing as much as the lungs. Breathing is a 
total complex process of interaction between organ- 


240 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 


ism and environment, in which the environment is 
just as active as the organism. What is true of 
breathing is likewise true of anything else one may 
do. It is true of walking and thinking, desiring 
and willing, dreaming and aspiring. None of these 
is done by the body alone nor can it be found in 
the body any more than walking can be found in 
the foot. Always the environment plays as large 
a part as the organism in the complex process of 
interaction. Whence, then, comes this energy, this 
influx of power? Plainly it does not come “from 
within” any more than “from without.” 

The problem of how to release maximum energy 
in human living is largely a problem of how to 
bring all stimuli to bear upon the organism so as 
to awaken its full capacity for response, but in such 
a way that the responses shall not obstruct one 
another. 

Worship does this. In mystic worship the atten- 
tion is no longer selective. One attends in a diffi- 
sive way to the total mass of stimulation which is 
playing upon the organism and init. But one does 
not attend to these as so many diverse stimuli; 
rather he attends to them as a single total mass of 
stimulation. They do not awaken in him diver- 
gent impulses, because his attention is so diffusive 
and there is no specific response. “The mass of 
stimulation quickens his powers in a uniform per- 
vasive manner. Something analogous to it is found 
in aesthetic contemplation. His whole system is 
toned up. The habits and impulses of which one 
is capable are aroused simultaneously and produce 


AND SCIENTIFIC METHOD 241 


within one a labile interplay of a thronging mass 
of impulses which merge into a single undefined 
quickening of the total personality. The resulting 
state is one of emotional glow, of calmness and 
poise, a sense of command over all one’s powers 
and a readiness to face whatever the world may 
offer. There is no specific response, but a readiness 
to respond with utmost energy and self-control in 
whatever way may be required. For some, it 
would seem, a sort of ecstacy is added. 

It should be noted that what we have described 
is a generation of energy, but without any direc- 
tion given to it. The energy is not put to work. 
If this is as far as the matter goes it does not accom- 
plish much. It gives one a few minutes, or it may 
be a few hours, of peace or ecstacy, and then Passes 
away. It is a sort of orgy in which one indulges. 
It is a state that comes and goes and leaves nothing 
behind except that toning up of the whole organ- 
ism and that relief from tension and strain. There 
is a peace and power that continues; but so far as 
concerns any constructive remaking of self and the 
world, there is little or none that results. In order 
to have these constructive results there must be 
something else. Christianity supplies this some- 
thing else. 

What we have been describing is the dynamic of 
mystic worship in general, but not necessarily 
Christian. Unchristianized mysticism is a danger- 
ous thing, just as maximum energy undirected is 
always dangerous. The energy made available 
through such mysticism may overflow into all sorts 


242 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 


of excesses. The peace and power brought on by 
it may operate in a destructive or unhealthy man- 
ner. 


THE DYNAMIC OF CHRISTIAN WORSHIP 


The Christian does not merely submit himself 
to the mass of stimulation reached through mysti- 
cism. He does more; he endeavors to interpret 
this stimulation. He comes to it with a well-defined 
belief and purpose which together are called faith. 
His faith is that this total mass of stimulation is 
working upon him and his world to reconstruct 
both. He has some idea concerning what this stim- 
ulation would make out of him and his world. He 
has the faith that he is conversing with a Will and 
that this Will is working to refashion him into the 
likeness of Jesus Christ; and, further, that it is 
working to reconstruct his world into the Kingdom 
of God as depicted in the words of Jesus. 

When one enters into mystic worship with such 
a faith as this, it becomes very different from ele- 
mentary mysticism. It produces far different re- 
sults. Such worship becomes the most effective 
influence for actually reshaping the individual into 
the likeness of Jesus and of remaking his world, in 
so far as his worship can reach, into the likeness of 
the Kingdom of God. Such worship leaves after- 
effects. not only of peace and power, but of peace 
and power directed into new constructive channels. 
Such worship is a reconstructive force working 
through the individual. 

We have spoken of the danger of unchristian- 


i i i i 


AND SCIENTIFIC METHOD Lao 


ized mysticism. There is also danger in the pro- 
cess of Christianizing mysticism. The danger is 
that mysticism may be driven out altogether. Let 
us explain. 

When mysticism is Christianized the individual 
presents himself to the total mass of stimulation 
and responds with all his impulses, but under the 
control of a certain belief concerning the character 
of this stimulation and concerning the form which 
his own response should assume. He believes that 
this stimulation is the pervasive will of God work- 
ing through every organic process of his body and 
through every hidden recess of his mind. He be- 
lieves, furthermore, that this will of God found 
most complete expression and embodiment in the 
historic person of Jesus Christ; and that this Will, 
which so completely fulfilled itself in Jesus, is striv- 
ing to fulfill itself through his own person. He 
believes, still further, that, despite the fact his own 
activities diverge so far from the will of God, the 
will of God can still retain its own unchanging 
purpose while merging so intimately in all his own 
activities, because it is a will of suffering love. 
Thus the Christian mystic’s worship is a way by 
which he yields himself, like copper wire to the elec- 
tric current, to this Will which so persistently and 
pervasively works upon him to reshape him and 
surcharge him into the likeness of Jesus Christ. 

So it is that the Christian mystic comes to his 
worship with a definite belief and purpose. But mys- 
ticism consists precisely in putting aside all precon- 
ceptions which narrow the range of sensitivity, 


244 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 


exclude from attention many stimuli, and suppress 
many responses. “ Mysticism consists precisely in 
putting aside all definite purpose, all special inter- 
est, and yielding oneself unresistingly and without 
bias to the play of all the stimuli that reach the 
organism. One must do this in order to avoid that 
narrow exclusiveness and selectiveness of attention 
by which ordinary life keeps out this mass of stim- 
uli and suppresses all those responses save a few. 
Thus there is a conflict between pure mysticism and 
any kind of definite belief and purpose such as the 
Christian must have. The Christian brings a belief 
that is likely to select and sift the stimuli; and a 
purpose that is likely to distort and suppress the 
responses. Consequently the Christianizing of mys- 
ticism often drives out mysticism altogether. In 
other cases the mysticism has driven out the defi- 
nite belief and purpose which is Christianity. So 
it is that there has often been war between Chris- 
tianity and mysticism. Some Christian leaders and 
institutions today are suspicious, some even hostile, 
to all mysticism. 

But traditional Chrisianity, on the one hand, 
and mysticism on the other, must be reconciled if 
there is to be any Christian acquaintance with God. 
If the two cannot be united traditional Christianity 
ceases to be a religion at all and becomes only a 
mass of traditional ideas and standards of conduct 
enforced by certain institutions. 

But the two can be united and to some degree 
always are wherever the Christian religion, (as dis- 
tinguished from the mere tradition of Christianity) 


AND SCIENTIFIC METHOD 245 


is found. Their union requires that the purpose 
which the Christian brings to his worship be not 
narrowly fixed by tradition but be held subject to 
modification by the mystic experience. Their 
union requires that the belief which the Christian 
brings be progressively developed under the stimu- 
lation of the mystic experience. The belief must 
not persist rigidly in the form in which the indi- 
vidual first accepted it. It must not narrow the 
experience down to its own measure, but must be 
enlarged and reshaped to fit the experience. There 
must be constant interaction between traditional 
belief and mystic experience, and the experience 
interpreted and its energy directed by the belief. 
The Christian faith (which is the combination of 
belief and purpose above described), as handed 
down by tradition, must be a device by which all 
the impulses of the individual, quickened to action 
through and through by the pervasive stimulation 
of experiencing God, may be organized and di- 
rected without suppression or distortion of any im- 
pulse, and without impairing the group life of in- 
dividuals with one another. How to catch the 
personality in the full swing of mystic stimulation 
and direct it into constructive endeavor and appre- 
ciation without loss of energy or vision, that is the 
service of Christian worship to morality. To do 
this the Christian must have definite ideas about 
God and the world; and he must have definite pur- 
poses concerning right and wrong. But these ideas 
and purposes must be capable of much growth and 
transformation. The faith the Christian brings 


246 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 


to his worship must not select and exclude; it must 
only direct and instruct the total personality as he 
responds to the immediate presence of God. For 
there is no stimulus which so completely awakens 
the whole personality as the immediate presence 
of God; and there is no time when the person so 
much needs instruction and direction. 

The whole significance of Christian doctrine, 
and the chief mission of the Christian church, 
should be to provide the individual with an ade- 
quate belief and purpose for his worship. It must 
so equip him with a faith that he can reap all the 
benefits of a Christianized mysticism while avoiding 
two opposite evils—on the one hand, the dangers 
and excesses of an unchristianized mysticism, and 
on the other hand, the suppressions and perver- 
sions of a narrow, rigid tradition. “To equip the 
individual with a purpose which directs, but does 
not suppress, any of the impulses aroused in mystic 
worship; and with an idea which interprets, but 
does not exclude, any of the stimuli unveiled in 
mystic worship—this is the task of the Christian 
church. ‘This is a tremendous task. ‘Too often 
the church has not seen that such provision for 
worship is the chief thing it has todo. Too often 
it has not recognized this to be any part of its work. 
Too often it has provided a doctrine and a cere- 
mony which dried up the fountain of mysticism 
and thus deprived the individual and society of that 
beneficent, constructive dynamic which resides in 
Christian worship, and which is the greatest power 
known to man. In such worship there is power 


AND SCIENTIFIC METHOD 247 


which can make the individual over into the like- 
ness of Jesus of Nazareth and a power which can 
reshape society after the fashion of the Kingdom 
proclaimed by Him. But this power is unavailable 
until the individual is equipped with plastic and 
otherwise adequate ideas and moral purposes enab- 
ling him to make Christian acquaintance with God 
through mystic worship. When the church puts 
anything else before this task of bringing men to 
acquaintance with God and so releasing the great 
constructive powers for individual upbuilding and 
social service, it is recreant to its duty. 


PRAYER AND ITS ANSWER 


The state of pervasive stimulation attained in 
mystic worship is one in which the psychological 
and physiological processes of the organism are 
most plastic and readily moulded into the form of 
any new or larger purpose. Hence if, in this state 
of worship, one prays for health or poise, for sym- 
pathy or understanding, for skill or mastery, for 
anything which has to do with upbuilding of the 
self, one can have it; for in this state the subtle 
mechanisms of the organism are most completely at 
the command of the individual. In this state one 
can most adequately develop these habits—whether 
mental or physiological or both—by which 
achievement and appreciation, adaptability and 
comprehension, can reach their maximum. This 
control and redirection of one’s energies is the an- 
swer to prayer so far as it has to do with one’s own 
upbuilding. And one’s own upbuilding should be 


248 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 


one’s first concern. Draw first the beam out of 
your own eye before you commence to meddle with 
your brother’s affairs. 

Here a question might be raised. Our wording 
might be interpreted to indicate that prayer is a 
means by which the individual attains control of 
himself and hence is prayer to himself and answered 
by himself. But this is precisely that misunder- 
standing to which we referred at the beginning of 
the previous section, arising out of the confusion of 
stimulus and response. “To see more clearly that it 
is God who works in answered prayer, let us note 
a slight distinction between worship and prayer. 

Prayer should ordinarily come after worship. 
To worship means to become wholly attentive to 
God, i.e. to subject oneself to that total mass of 
stimulation which is playing upon one all the time 
but to which one is not responsive save in worship. 
Then prayer is what normally follows in Christian 
worship. Prayer is that purpose which becomes 
dominant in this state of worship. This purpose, 
in normal healthy prayer, is the product of two 
factors; (1) the persistent desires and past experi- 
ences of the individual; (2) reorganization and 
unification of these by reason of their simultaneous 
stimulation occurring in the mystic experience. 
The dominant purpose thus arising, in which the 
whole personality is absorbed and harmonized, is 
the work of God inasmuch as the stimulating pres- 
ence of God has brought it into existence. It is by 
reason of the organization of all the mechanisms 
of the organism under this dominant purpose, that 


AND SCIENTIFIC METHOD 249 


the marvelous results of prayer are produced in the 
individual. It is plainly the work of that total 
mass of stimulation which reaches him through the 
mystic experience. And this is precisely the work 
of God, 

But one does not always pray for a remoulding 
of the self or for anything which can be affected 
by the remoulding of self. One may pray for mat- 
ters which seem to lie wholly outside the sphere of 
one’s influence. Can prayer modify such remote 
objects and events? Here we cannot be dogmatic. 
Science has scarcely begun to fathom all the differ- 
ent processes at work in the world. Many an 
established ‘‘law’’ of science will have to be recon- 
structed as new facts and theories are brought into 
the realm of scientific knowledge. It is quite pos- 
sible that when the personality is completely 
awakened, as in worship, there are tensions, vibra- 
tions, influences, call them what you will, which 
come into play, and which produce results which 
could not otherwise be produced, even when those 
results seem to lie completely beyond the control of 
ordinary human effort or of this particular individ- 
ual’s effort. 

This hypothesis concerning prayer will be 
wholly unsatisfactory to some. They will say: 
In prayer it is God who must produce the result 
and not the fully awakened personality with its 
vibrations, tensions, influences, etc. Of course it is 
God who produces the result. This we have 
already explained. It is God because it is He who 
through worship awakens the total personality and 


250 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 


sO gives rise to these novel forces. It is just as truly 
God producing the results through prayer as it 
would be if one imagined God up in the sky listen- 
ing to the prayer and then sending an angel down 
to a designated locality to do what was required. 
It would be God operating in both cases, but in the 
hypothesis we suggest the operation would not con- 
flict with a conceivable science. Both descriptions 
of prayer, that of God and angel, and that of ten- 
sions and influences, may be equally correct and 
equally false, inasmuch as both are theories by 
which we endeavor to designate processes which we 
believe are going on but which we cannot describe. 
Until we can describe them more accurately we 
must content ourselves with such theories. 


SOCIAL SOLIDARITY THROUGH WORSHIP 


There are two ways in which people may reach 
agreement. The first includes the second, but the 
second can stand by itself without the first. “The 
first is agreement through sharing the same mass of 
sensuous experience. When my brother and I have 
seen and felt the grateful shade of the same tree, 
listened to the rustle of its leaves and viewed the 
landscape from its base, we can agree concerning 
many things pertaining to that tree. We have 
shared a common experience. This is the sort of 
agreement which may be called community or 
brotherhood. This is the agreement which makes 
the whole world kin because it is a common experi- 
ence of nature. 


AND SCIENTIFIC METHOD Zoe 


But there is another kind of agreement which is 
purely logical. It is agreement due to the compul- 
sion of logical implication. It is agreement con- 
cerning abstract propositions, such as: Two times 
two equals four; the three angles of a triangle are 
equal to two right angles; if a is to the right of b 
and b is to the right of c, then a is to the right of c. 
Such logical agreement does not of itself yield 
brotherhood. It does not constitute community. 
It does not bind hearts together. No doubt it is 
required in order to have the community of a com- 
mon mass of sensuous experience, but by itself 
alone it does not bring about community of pur- 
pose and good fellowship. There need be no sym- 
pathy, no love, no joining of common human pur- 
poses in such agreement. We mention this kind of 
agreement only in order to get it out of the way 
and show that it does not yield social solidarity. 

Our proposition is that all community of pur- 
pose, all depth of sympathy, in a word, all social 
solidarity, is based on that agreement which arises 
out of sharing a common mass of experience. The 
more such common experience is shared, providing 
there is sufficient agreement in logical definition and 
scientific description to enable the individuals to 
recognize the community of their experience, the 
more social solidarity there is. 

The problem is how to attain more of this rec- 
ognized community of experience which yields 
brotherhood. The experience gathered in ordinary 
conduct of life is very defective in this respect be- 
cause in ordinary conduct we select from out the 


252 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 


mass of experience only those features which meet 
the demands of the peculiar practical and theoreti- 
cal interest which dominates us as individuals or 
as representatives of a certain group. Other indi- 
viduals, and representatives of other groups, select 
different features. Hence we cannot agree; we can- 
not attain community. Even when we do select 
the same features each gives it a caste different from 
the others because of his own particular bias. Only 
by attending to the total mass of experience, un- 
sifted, and undistorted, can we attain this fuller 
community. . 

This, we have seen, is precisely what worship 
does. In worship we cast aside our special bias and 
selective interest. Through worship deep and 
dear community is most completely attained because 
in worship we share the common mass of experi- 
ence poured out on all men. In worship we attain 
that brotherhood which binds together the hearts 
of men. 

There is something else which promotes this 
same good, although to a less degree than worship. 
It is art. Art takes from us the bias of practical 
and theoretical and personal interest. Aesthetic 
appreciation is disinterested. In so far as many en- 
joy the same works of art they share the same fea- 
tures of sensuous experience. Not only do they 
share these features in the works of art, but through 
these works of art they are trained to take note of 
these features in the natural world round about 
them all the time. A color, a contour, a sound, a 
movement, will be consciously noted by them be- 


AND SCIENTIFIC METHOD 253 


cause they have had it impressed upon them in 
works of art. It enters into that mass of experience 
which constitutes the background of consciousness. 
This common background, shared by many, gives 
community. They who sing together the same 
songs, dance the folk dances, inherit the same 
myths, stories and poems, and view the same paint- 
ings, have a social solidarity which cannot be 
attained by those who lack such a common herit- 
age. With such common heritage of art must be 
classed also certain conventions of speech, of into- 
nation, of good manners and standards of polite 
society in dress and gesture. All these are forms of 
art and direct the selective attention of all to the 
same features in the world of nature so that they 
share a common mass of experience, 

But worship goes much deeper than art. It does 
not merely guide the selective attention to common 
features that can be aesthetically appreciated, but it 
goes on to that greater mass of common features 
which can be appreciated only mystically. The 
Greeks were bound together by art, the Jews by 
worship. History shows which is the stronger tie, 


MORAL VISION THROUGH WORSHIP 


The greatest difficulty in moral conduct is to 
keep all the relevant facts in view. If we could do 
this, nine-tenths of our moral problems would be 
solved. But we cannot keep all the facts in view. 
Passion and prejudice distort the vision and becloud 
the issue. Certain facts stand out gleaming white, 
like peaks caught by the setting sun, while al] the 


25% RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 


rest lie hidden in the shadow. Passion and preju- 
dice illumine those peaks which lure us and leave 
the others in darkness. By passion we mean the 
dominant impulse which has been aroused by the 
novel situation. By prejudice we mean the habits, 
due to past training, which are so rigid they will 
not yield to the pressure of new and more com- 
plex situations. The man who is controlled by the 
routine of habit is not ordinarily swayed by pas- 
sion; and the man swept with passion is not com- 
monly the creature of rigid habits. But each 
throws certain facts into bold relief while other 
equally pertinent matters are ignored. The prob- 
lem of moral conduct is how to see all facts in the 
clear full light of reason instead of those few iso- 
lated facts in the slant light of passion and preju- 
dice. 

Now worship, as we have seen, is that attitude 
in which hidden things come to light, the selections 
and sifting and exclusions of attention are more or 
less removed so that all things are viewed in more 
of a uniform light. Something approximating 
noonday, or, if one prefers, a pervasive twilight, 
‘3 substituted for the flashes and streamings of pas- 
sion. It is in worship, then, that the great moral 
problems are best solved. He who cannot wor- 
ship, or who cannot retire toa quiet place and “‘col- 
lect himself,’ cannot deliver himself from the 
clutch of passion and prejudice sufficiently to react 
to all the pertinent facts. Hence such a one cannot 
live a very moral life. That is to say, he cannot 
master the technique of abundant living. Such a 


eS ee ee 


AND SCIENTIFIC METHOD Z50 


one may be most highly respectable. The man 
whose narrow prejudices and passions happen to fit 
into the social order of his time may live a most 
faultless life from the standpoint of the administra- 
tor who notes only flagrant abuses of the mores. 
But he does not live an abundant life, and morality 
is the technique of the most abundant life which 
the mores permit. Within these limitations of the 
mores there is a minimum and a maximum. If 
narrow prejudices have been shaped by careful 
training, they will keep one at the minimum. But 
only high morality will bring one to the maximum. 
And high morality requires worship, for the reason 
stated. 


MORAL CREATIVITY OF WORSHIP 


A religion which is devoted exclusively to the 
promotion of human welfare, as current opinion 
has defined human welfare, becomes a servant to 
the prevailing arts and sciences. Its God becomes 
identified with the values which the people of that 
time and place have come to recognize. Religion 
then becomes the great sustainer of the customs and - 
traditions, the arts and sciences, that constitute the 
civilization of the time. Such a religion cannot be 
a transformer or revolutionizer. Such religion can- 
not point men to other values on beyond those 
goods which they seek in their everyday lives. Such 
a religion is not a master of the prevailing civiliza- 
tion, but a servant. Such a religion cannot usher 
in a new day, it can only help to perpetuate an old 
day. The voice of God, in such a religion, is 


256 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 


merely the echo of what the custom and the sciences 
declare. When the statesman or scientist says that 
such and such a matter is good, it becomes the busi- 
ness of such a religion to respond: Thus saith the 
Lord, and so herd the masses into conformity with 
the dictates of scientist and statesman. It was such 
a religion that the Roman Caesars tried to bring 
to perfection in demanding that all men worship 
Caesar as God. The Romans were intensely prac- 
tical people and their religion was a practical reli- 
gion. No mystical nonsense for them. 

Early Christianity was not a practical religion in 
this sense. It did not sustain the values which were 
socially recognized by the civilization that pre- 
vailed. It did not promote social solidarity under 
the Roman government. That was precisely the 
reason why the Roman government persecuted the 
early Christians. Early Christianity was a revolu- 
tionary religion. It was a ferment that disinte- 
grated the prevailing social order in the interest of 
a totally different manner of life. 

Religion at its best is always creative. To be 
creative means to run counter, in some respects, to 
the established practices of the day and so to hinder, 
instead of promote, the recognized practical and 
social requirements. “To be creative means to intro- 
duce new values beyond those which men have 
heretofore recognized and to devise new forms of 
conduct different from those which the established 
social order and the prevailing arts and sciences pre- 
scribe. To be creative means to be sovereign, not 


AND SCIENTIFIC METHOD 257 


merely servant, to the prevailing civilization. It 
means to lead, not merely to follow. 

The creation of new and more satisfactory ways 
of living is one of the noblest of all the arts. 
There is more creativity in it than in poetry, paint- 
ing or music. It requires more courage, more in- 
sight and more artistry than any of the fine arts. 
Indeed there are grounds for saying that the fine 
arts are the refuge to which creative natures flee 
who have not the courage and mastery over men 
and conditions sufficient to exercise their creative 
talents in that more direct moulding of human life 
which is found in devising new and better habits 
of dealing with environment. The great origina- 
tor of moral forms of conduct is the artist who has 
not been forced to shrink back to the handling of 
such unresisting materials as paint and sound and 
stone, but has gone straight to the hearts of men 
and wrought his new creations directly into their 
flesh and mental habits. He is the prophet who 
has had the religious experience which dissolves old 
habits and views and makes possible the rise of 
new outlooks, purposes, values. He does not 
merely echo the pronouncements of secular leaders, 
but gives original pronouncements of his own. 
These tremendous transformers of human ways of 
living have come, after spending forty days and 
nights in worship, saying: Ye have heard of old 
time, an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, but 
I say unto you, love your enemies, They have 
said that when you are struck upon one cheek, turn 
the other. They have said that the Lord sends his 


258 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 


rain upon the just and the unjust, and have ex- 
horted us to be perfect as our heavenly Father is 
perfect in this respect. Such revolutionists as these 
have been mystics, cultivating the presence of God 
for God’s sake. Such were Jesus, Buddha, Con- 
fucius, Moses and Mohammed. 

It would seem from these facts that worship is 
one of the sources out of which new creations in 
the art of living arise. It is in worship that new 
paths open up; worship is the only suitable prep- 
aration for the greatest creative artistry in all the 
world, the art of reshaping the total vital process 
of living. This is morality. Through worship 
we reach a vantage point outside the civilization of 
any particular time in the sense that we can survey 
it, criticize it, find it wanting and reconstruct it. 
Worship lifts us beyond civilization. Worship is 
uncivilized and can never be wholly civilized. It 
is wild and untamed. It comes in to destroy civ- 
ilizations and to make them over again. It is from 
worship that the great religious leaders have come 
back to destroy that interlocking congeries of cus- 
toins, which determine the technique of living 
(moral standards) of any time and people, and to 
create a new technique, which means a new moral- 
ity. They return from the wilderness with the 
vision of a new world in their eyes. 

Here, we believe, is the correct adjustment be- 
tween morals and worship. Religion should pro- 
mote the welfare of man but it should do so not 
merely by conserving the socially recognized values 
and inspiring men to achieve or to conform as sec- 


AND SCIENTIFIC METHOD 259 


ular leaders may determine. It may very properly 
do this, to be sure. But it must do more than this 
if religion is to preserve itself and not be sucked 
down into the stream of tradition and become 
merely an established institution like any other 
system of customs. Its chief social function is not 
to support the established order, or secular leader, 
although it may well do this, but to take the place 
of leadership itself from time to time. And this it 
can do only when it preserves worship as some- 
thing independent and insubordinate to the recog- 
nized goods of life, because of its devotion to the 
unrecognized goods. Worship cannot be wholly 
subordinated to the promotion of human welfare, 
if by welfare we mean the attainment of those 
goods which we have thus far been able to discern. 
Worship must serve to bring to our ken goods thus 
far undiscerned and unacknowledged by our civili- 
zation. If it is not guarded in this function, but 
given over wholly to inspiring human conduct in 
the quest of established goods, the chief fountain 
head of increasing life for man will be stopped. 
The more scientific our morality becomes, the 
more it requires worship to provide for growth. 
The more strenuously we strive to attain the 
highest morality thus far discerned, the more in- 
capable we become of discovering any other forms 
of conduct which may yield a richer life, and hence 
constitute a higher morality. The more we con- 
centrate our attention and specialize our effort 
upon the attainment of certain definite goods, the 
more completely do we shut out from our field of 


260 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 


vision any other goods. The more finely adapted, 
i.e., scientifically constructed our social organiza- 
tion becomes for the maintenance and acquisition 
of certain values, the more strictly does it confine 
our range of interest, and hence eliminate those 
blurred, undefined borders of interest which con- 
stitute the growing edge of life. These features of 
scientific moral efficiency (a) strenuosity, (b) 
concentration and specialization of attention anid 
effort, and (c) the fine adaptation of social organt- 
zation to certain well-defined functions, all three 
tend to confine human living to certain limits and 
to bring growth to an end. It is only as we can 
break through the charmed circle of such a system, 
and bring to light new and different goods to seek, 
that we can have growth. 

What is more, when growth is thus cut off and 
the goods we seek are so strictly defined, they lose 
their charm in our eyes. The greatest lure of any 
object of endeavor is that larger, more or less un- 
defined good, to which it may lead. But when the 
scope of endeavor and aspiration is so clearly de- 
fined and limited, this great lure vanishes. Life 
becomes stale. Vanishes the glamour and romance, 
which is simply our sense of the great unattained 
and undefined beyond. And with this vanishing 
of the undefined possibilities of growth, human life 
ceases to satisfy. 

This is the reason why moral creativity, or the 
growing edge of life, must be guarded above all. 
This is the reason why Christian worship is nec- 
essary to supplement scientific morality. 


AND. SCIENTIFIC METHOD 261 


How does worship keep open the door toward 
the unattained and undiscerned goods? The psy- 
chology of worship, as we have previously de- 
scribed it, plainly reveals why worship does this 
above all else. Our sense organs are capable of 
revealing to us far more than we have thus far 
learned to interpret, recognize, or appreciate in any 
way. Besides the external sense organs, which 
themselves can deliver to our apperception immeas- 
urably more than we have learned how to appre- 
ciate, there are the internal organs, glands, muscles, 
etc., all of which signify something with regard 
to our total environment. To worship means to 
surrender our attention to this mass of experience 
from all these sources. Out of experience must be 
wrought whatever further goods may ever be at- 
tained by us. Worship provides for growth be- 
cause it brings to awareness such masses of experi- 
ence. 

In worship we go back, as it were, to the begin- 
ning, before the paths of selection and interpreta- 
tion diverge. If we are to beat new paths through 
the jungle of experience to the winning of new 
goods, we best can do it by thus returning to this 
starting point of unsifted and undefined sensuous 
experience. ‘This is where the infant begins his 
acquisition of the arts and sciences of his day; and 
the goods which civilization has to offer him must 
reach him through these sense data. The signifi- 
cance he is able to work out of these sense data, 
and through them, is the measure of what he will 
be able to acquire. And this mass of sensuous ex- 


262 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 


perience is where the human race began its historic 
development of all the arts and sciences. 

But when the mystic in worship returns to this 
starting point, he is not an infant or a savage. We 
have compared him to these only because, like them, 
he deals with uninterpreted experience. But he 
differs from them on two points. (1) The infant 
and savage are not necessarily aware of any wide 
fullness of immediate experience, as the mystic is. 
(2) The infant and savage face whatever data of 
sense enter their awareness, with little notion of any 
great undefined significance in them. ‘They know 
nothing of those larger goods which may be 
wrought out of these data and the fullness of fact 
which they must signify, however undiscovered 
that significance may be. But the mystic does 
-kaow there is such wealth of significance in imme- 
diate experience, because he has returned to this 
veil of immediacy from out of the system of arts 
and sciences which constitute the culture of his day. 
He has been beyond the veil, and has seen the great 
world as his age has been able to depict it. Now 
he comes back again behind the misty undefined 
veil of sense. What lies beyond this veil? What 
does it signify? Well, it signifies all that the arts 
and sciences of his age have been able truly to dis- 
cover. But is that all it signifies? No, indeed. No 
scientist would say that science had yet discovered 
all that the data of sense signify. No artist would 
say that art had brought all possibilities of beauty 
to light. No moralist would say that all noblest 
programs of action have been achieved. No soci- 


AND SCIENTIFIC METHOD 263 


ologist or statesman or group of lovers would say 
that all the joys and achievements of human asso- 
ciation had yet been reached. But above all the 
mystic knows, when he returns from that vision of 
the world which the culture of his day presents, 
back again to that mass of undefined experience out 
of which this vision has been developed, that this 
vision does not reveal more than the tiniest fraction 
of the total significance of this which he now im- 
mediately experiences. Vast regions of unexplored 
significance are in these data, or in this total datum, 
which he is now experiencing. God is there: and 
what enters into the life of God is there. He may 
feel there is this total significance in his mass of ex- 
perience, even though he can in no wise define it 
and has no descriptive knowledge of it. 

So it is that the mystic stands at the point from 
which all new paths must be broken. His experi- 
ence is that out of which all new creations must be 
brought forth. What is the vast and total signifi- 
cance of his experience he does not know. But the 
civilization of his day, and above all, his religious 
heritage, has taught him that it has such signifi- 
cance. ‘I’hat is the reason he is a worshipper while 
the infant is not. That is the reason it produces 
in him an attitude of anticipation, of wonder, and 
of awe. 

But these masses of experience which the mystic 
brings to light, can yield up their meaning only as 
they are interpreted. As long as they are not inter- 
preted, as long as they merely flood consciousness 
with a sense of vast undefined meaning and tone up 


264 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 


the organism with their pervasive stimulation, they 
are a form of luxury. They are forms of dissipa- 
tion in which the mystic may revel but which are 
of no value to anyone else and of no value to him 
after the mystic hour has passed. “These masses of 
experience must be made to yield up their signifi- 
cance. 

Now the interpretation of experience, making it 
yield up its significance, is the work of. science 
The prophetic mystic may guess at the significance. 
He may sometimes strike wonderfully near the 
truth with his guesses. He may have flashes of in- 
sight which are sometimes amazing. But his 
guesses will sometimes be just as amazingly fan- 
tastic. There is no method of testing truth and dis- 
tinguishing it from error save scientific method. 

Science needs religion to provide it with the raw 
material of fresh experience and fertility and plas- 
ticity of imagination. Scientific method cannot 
lead on continuously to ever more abundant life 
unless it is supplemented by religion. 


PART III 


THE NATURE AND FUNCTION OF 
RELIGION 


265 


CHAPTER X 
RELIGION AND IDEALS 


Can we identify religion with devotion to ideals? 
There is to-day a widespread tendency to do this. 
Prominent in a public library stands the motto: 
“To be religious is to pursue the highest ideals.”’ 
Sometimes the word value is substituted for the 
word ideal; but the word value is no clearer in its 
significance than ideal and there is just as much dif- 
ference of opinion concerning its exact meaning. 
Is that which we experience when we have distinc- 
tively religious experience an ideal? Is God or 
Christ or whatever the religious person may con- 
sider the chief object of his concern, preéminently 
an ideal? Is the chief function of religion to clar- 
ify, enforce and make alluring certain ideals—‘‘the 
conservation of socially recognized values’’—for 
instance? Is religion preéminently a device for 
glorifying social codperation and arousing utmost 
devotion to those goals of endeavor which society 
holds to be highest? | 

Or is the function of religious experience relative 
to ideals creative rather than conservative? Is it 
the reconstruction of ideals rather than the en- 
hancement and enforcement of established and rec- 
ognized ideals? Is it ‘‘the revaluation of values’ 

267 


268 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 


rather than the buttressing of values hitherto rec- 
ognized? Is it the experience of that from which 
new ideals may be derived rather than the experi- 
ence of ideals themselves? 

It is the second of these two suggested positions 
that we hold. We are very sure that the greatest 
obstacle in the way of individual growth and social 
progress is the ideal which dominates the individ- 
ual or the group. The greatest instrument of 
achievement and improvement is the ideal, and 
therefore our constant failures, miseries, and wick- 
edness are precisely due to the inadequacy of our 
highest ideals. Our ideals have in them all the 
error, all the impracticability, all the perversity and 
confusion that human beings who are themselves 
erring, impracticable, perverse and confused, can 
put into them. Our ideals are no doubt the best 
we have in the way of our constructions. But the 
best we have is pitifully inadequate. Our hope and 
full assurance is that we have in religion that by 
which constantly to reconstruct these ideals, cast- 
ing them aside ever again for better ones. Our 
hope is that we can improve our ideals. If we 
could not be saved from our own ideals, we would 
be lost indeed. 

If religion were identical with devotion to our 
highest ideals it plainly could not deliver us from 
the doom of those highest ideals. How can ideals 
be reconstructed? Certainly not by some higher 
ideal, for it is precisely that highest ideal which we 
need most to have reconstructed. How then? The 
only way to reconstruct ideals is by certain data of 


AND SCIENTIFIC METHOD 269 


experience. Experience alone can show us the in- 
adequacy of our ideals and provide us with the 
materials and hints for the construction of more 
adequate ones. There is nothing more foolishly 
sentimental than persistently to cling to some 
“highest ideal’ merely because it is so abstract and 
remote that it cannot be put to the test of experi- 
ence in such a way as to make a fool see its insuffi- 
ciency, although its derivatives and corollaries, the 
so-called lower ideals which can be tested, are con- 
stantly revealing their flaws. We claim that relj- 
gious experience is of such a nature that it preém- 
inently provides us with those data and that men- 
tal attitude by which we are able to fashion new 
ideals, and do this progressively to the end of con- 
tinuous growth. 

The popular present-day identification of relj- 
gion with ideals makes God an ideal or system of 
ideals. There are some who frankly say this. 
Others are too confused in their thinking, or too 
much under the bondage of traditional concepts, 
to see that this is actually the attitude they have 
assumed even though they will not explicitly say 
so. E, S. Ames is a very good example of one who 
identifies religion with the pursuit of ideals and 
God as a symbol of such highest ideals. We believe 
he recognizes very clearly and definitely that this 
is his own position. Yet he constantly states his 
views in a manner that is confusing. This is very 
natural, perhaps necessary, for one who takes this 
view. For if God is a sort of glorified Santa 
Claus, serving to symbolize a spirit, a desired sys- 


270 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 


tem of habits and institutions, “‘social values’ or 
whatever other name one prefers, it is plain that 
He will do this much more effectively if we truly 
are rather confused in our thinking and half the 
time take Him for a real person. It will help im- 
mensely if we can confuse the issue, befuddle our- 
selves and others, and so give the symbol the value 
of a living person. Ames describes our idea of 
God thus: ‘‘It is sometimes said that the God- 
idea belongs peculiarly to the realm of values 
rather than designating factual reality. But the 
distinction between value-judgments and factual 
judgments is not absolute. That it is a relative 
distinction may be seen in the universal and inher- 
ently teleological character of thought. All think- 
ing is normally purposive.” * This general princi- 
ple we certainly would not dispute. But it is plain 
that a very useful and beautiful confusion in our 
‘deas of God can be produced if we insist that God 
as value-judgment is somehow also a sort of fact- 
ual-judgment; and if we cherish Him as an ideal, 
He is also a sort of fact. Of course the same is true 
of Santa Claus. But Ames develops this cue im- 
mediately. He says: 

Only when extremely abstract and partial can 
it (thinking) be characterized as merely descrip- 
tive and factual. Again the God-idea is formed in 
terms of personality. And the conception of per- 
sonality involves primarily purposive action, not 
static being. The character of a person cannot be 
thought of except in terms of what he does. The 
idea of a supreme Person necessarily involves in the 

yy Ames, E. S., Psychology of Religious Experience, pp. 318, 319. ‘ 


AND SCIENTIFIC METHOD 27 


highest degree the element of will, of purpose and 
of movement toward great goals. It is a contra- 
diction in terms to conceive a person as mere ex- 
istence, that is, as fact simply. . . . The only 
kind of thinking of which human beings are 
capable is that which refers to ends, to needs, 
values. . The God-idea is a teleological idea, and 
in being such it shares fundamentally in the nature 
of all ideas,” 


Here is what seems to us a confusion of thought, 
no doubt brought on by the subconscious propen- 
sity to revere an idea as though it were a person 
when it is not. Of course an idea is teleological: 
but the teleology of the idea is not identical with 
the teleology of that to which the idea refers. The 
fact that my idea of a horse is telelogical does not 
make the teleology of my idea identical with the 
teleology of the horse. If it did, beggars would 
ride. A horse, as a living organism, is of course 
teleological. So also is my idea of a horse teleo- 
logical. Is then, my idea of a horse an adequate 
substitute for an actual living horse, because both 
horse and idea are teleological? Imagine one trying 
to comfort a poor lost wanderer in the wilds with 
the fact that his idea of a horse is as good as a horse 
because his idea is just as teleological as a horse 
could be. This is a juggling with words. Because 
a personality, and hence the supreme Person, must 
be purposive, and my idea of the supreme Person 
must also be purposive, therefore my idea of the 
supreme Person must be almost the same as an 


2 Ibid, 


Pa he RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 


actual living supreme Person. For do not they 
both involve ‘“‘primarily purposive action, not 
static being?”’ 

We have found it necessary to dwell at some 
little length on this point because it is a form of 
confusion that seems to pervade so much of our 
modern popular views upon religion. We feel that 
such thinking would lead to the destruction of re- 
ligion if religion depended on thinking—and it 
does in part depend upon thinking. 


IDEALISM 


There is, however, another and very different 
way in which God is identified with the Ideal and 
religion with the pursuit of ideals. It is the way 
of philosophic idealism. It holds that concepts, 
ideals, all universals, are present, objective beings, 
which are quite independent of our thinking; 
which may be discovered, cherished, adored, 
sought, by us, but are by no means merely crea- 
tures of our own minds. And in this sense, say 
these thinkers, God is an ideal or system of ideals. 

This throws us back into the whole great prob- 
lem of what is a concept and what is its status. 
Suffice it here to say that if concepts are held to 
make up a sort of immaterial spiritual world of 
themselves then that world must include every con- 
cept whatsoever, false as well as true, and every 
ideal, good and bad, along with every vile and 
loathsome thing that enters the human fancy and 
every horror that ever has or ever can come to our 
minds. No one could identify such a “‘world of 


AND SCIENTIFIC METHOD 273 


pure essences’ with God. It must be some selected 
portion of this “‘world’’ that is God. And then 
we are thrown back on the old problem of what 
universals, what ideals—among this infinite total- 
ity—constitute God? The ideals I esteem highest? 
—or those you exalt? The ideals that I thought 
best last year, or now?—-or those that I shall hold 
highest ten years hence? 


This identification of God with ideals has so 
many different forms and ramifications that we 
beat the air in our attack upon it unless we fix on 
some particular presentation of it. Let us take one 
of the most competent advocates of this religion 
of ideals and examine his case. “There are a host 
from whom we might select but scarcely any more 
excellent than Pringle Pattison. 


In his Idea of God (page 246) he says: 


Whence, then, are these ideals derived and what 
is the meaning of their presence in the human 
soul? Whence does Man possess this outlook upon 
a perfect Truth and Beauty and an infinite Good- 
ness, the world of empirical fact being, as Bacon 
says, in proportion inferior to the soul? Man did 
not weave them out of nothing any more than he 
brought himself into being. “It is He that hath 
made us, and not we ourselves’; and from the 
same fontal Reality must be derived those ideals 
which are the masterlight of all our seeing, the 
element, in particular, of our moral and religious 
life. The presence of the Ideal is the reality of 
God within us!* 


paw 
3 Italies mine. 


274 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 


One strain of argument in this passage seems to 
be that because God made man and man has ideals, 
therefore ideals are of God. On the same line one 
could say that because man has errors, illusions, evil 
wishes and evil deeds, these also are of God. Or, 
pressing the matter further, because Man is not 
ideal and God made man, God must be other than 
ideal. ‘‘From the same fontal reality must be 
derived’? everything in man. He speaks of man’s 
outlook upon a perfect Truth and Beauty and an 
infinite Goodness. But just exactly what is meant 
by a perfect Truth, etc.? We admit that there is 
a common urge, an ultimate craving, common to 
all men, which is a sign of God working in us. But 
to call it an ideal is to falsely represent it. Our 
ideals are our attempts to interpret this urge, to 
conceive in thought its objective and to shape our 
conduct in such a way as to attain it. But these 
ideals are not the actual object which stirs us and 
can ultimately satisfy us. Truth for me is my 
knowledge of the facts. Perhaps by perfect truth 
the author means my knowledge of the total fact. 
But is God identical with myself in that status of 
knowing the total fact? When I worship God am 
I worshipping myself in that idealized state of 
knowing the total Fact?. No, of course not, our 
author would reply. God does even now know 
the total fact, i.e. knows Himself completely. Why 
then speak of God as an ideal? Because I am reli- 
gious only as I strive to be as God and like Him 
know the total fact. If that is what is meant then 
we must distinguish between two things. To con- 


AND SCIENTIFIC METHOD 2/0 


fuse the two, as we believe our author does, is to 
render our thinking ambiguous. We must dis- 
tinguish between (1) God the actual present total 
knower, and (2) ourselves in the prospective ideal 
state of knowing in like manner. The latter may 
be an ideal. But the former, God Himself, is not. 
What we worship, what we love and experience 
religiously, is God and not the ideal in any ordi- 
nary sense of the word ideal. 


Consider another quotation: 


The human idea of God or of perfection is 
- + - . one which grows with man’s own growth, 
acquiring fresh content from every advance in 
knowledge or in goodness, opening up fresh 
heights and depths to him who presses honestly 
forward; but he who penetrates farthest will be 
the last to say that he has attained. We are never 
at the goal, but as we move, the direction in which 
it lies becomes more and more definite. The move- 
ment and the direction imply the goal; they define 
it sufficiently for our human purposes; and in di- 
rect experience we are never at a loss to know what 
is higher and what is lower, what is better and 
what is worse.* 


We are never at the goal, to be sure, but are we 
ever at God? Do we ever attain God? Yes, our 
author would reply. Then the goal plainly can- 
not be identical with God, the goal being ourselves 
in a certain anticipated situation or status, and not 
God. And when he says that in direct experience 
we are never at a loss to know what is higher and 


4Ibid., pp. 248, 249, 


276 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 


what is lower, we cannot follow him. To have 
direct experience of God does not mean to know 
what God knows. It does not even mean that we 
ourselves have any adequate idea of God. Direct 
experience is not knowledge. It does not require 
great knowledge to experience God, and great 
knowledge does not result necessarily from the ex- 
perience of God. And there is no direct experience 
whatsoever, moral, religious, aesthetic or what not, 
which is of such a nature as to leave man “‘never at 
a loss to know what is higher and what is lower.”’ 
By a number of carefully regulated direct experi- 
ences, one can test his ideas and attain a high degree 
of certainty. But there is no unique sort of experi- 
ence that in some mysterious way renders the mind. 
infallible. 


“Hence the ideal is precisely the most real thing 
in the world; and those ranges of our experience, 
such as religion, which are specifically concerned 
with the ideal, instead of being treated as a cloud- 
cuckoo-land of subjective fancy, may reasonably 
be accepted as the best interpreters we have of the 
true nature of reality.’ 


Here again we find the confusion between expe- 
rience and knowledge and between the ideal and 
the living presence of God. We experience reality 
and we interpret that experience. The interpreta- 
tion may be false or true, or partly both. But an 
immediate experience cannot be either false or true. 
. It is simply so much given data of experience. 
Some of our ideals may be the best interpreters we 


5 Ibid., p. 252. 


eee ee 


ee 


AND SCIENTIFIC METHOD a7. 


have of our immediate experience of reality; but 
to say that ideals, merely because they are ideals, 
regardless of their nature, are the best interpreters 
of reality, is plainly false. Some ideals are good 
interpretations and some are not; none are infal- 
lible, and many flatly contradict one another. 

We know that Mr. Pringle Pattison would say 
we are not fair to him; that he does not mean what 
we say he means. We would agree with him. He 
does not mean what his assertions imply. That is 
precisely our criticism of his thought. We feel 
there is a confusion in which his meanings become 
entangled. This confusion is so wide-spread in 
modern religious thought, is doing so much dam- 
age to the interests of religion, and will do much 
more if continued, that we feel it necessary to criti- 
cize it very severely. We believe we have very 
much in common with Mr. Pringle Pattison. It is 
his method of treating the subject matter rather 
than his apprehension of the subject matter with 
which we disagree, if we correctly detect his appre- 
hension under the treatment. 

We hold that an ideal is nothing else than an 
hypothesis until it becomes a demonstrated fact: 
and then it is no longer an ideal but an existent sit- 
uation or status. It is true that one of the chief 
functions of religious experience is to quicken new 
aspirations, new visions of some desired situation, 
social reorganization, habit system, world outlook, 
or what not. But these visions and aspirations are 
hypotheses, programs of action, no more divine 
than any other, and should be subjected to all the 


278 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 


tests, criticisms, analyses and tentative experiments 
that any other hypothesis is subjected to. “They 
are not divine, but our reactions to the divine. It 
is quite natural that when religious experience leads 
to the condemnation of established ways and stim- 
ulates the constructive powers of the imagination, 
there should spring forth, as though from some 
mysterious outside source, marvelously accurate 
insights into the better way of life. But if we wor- 
ship this insight or vision as though it were God, 
we are idolators. Much of the worst kind of dog- 
matism has come from this deification of doctrine 
and vision. Our thoughts and our ideals are never 
identical with God. 


RELIGION AND GROWTH 


It is this identification of God with certain ideals, 
scientific and philosophical systems, institutions 
and practices, which has frustrated religious expe- 
rience in the performance of its genuine progressive 
function of leading human life to ever greater 
abundance. It is this that has made religion so 
often the chief opponent to new scientific theories, 
new and better fashioned institutions, new moral 
interpretations, and new and better ideals. It is 
this theory of religion that has perverted the whole 
function of religious experience. The great reli- 
gious leaders of history have been able to break 
through the obstructions of established ideals and 
institutions, declaring: Ye have heard of old 
time, but I say unto you. It was thus all the great 
Hebrew prophets spoke. It is thus that all the out- 


AND SCIENTIFIC METHOD 279 


standing religious leaders have spoken. And in 
more humble fashion ordinary religious men have 
come from the hour of religious experience with a 
new and different vision. “This is a part of what 
is involved in conversion. 

The age which thinks that the chief work of 
religion is to whip or lure men into fuller devotion 
to established ideals has forgotten the greatest of 
all religious injunctions: ‘““Ye must be born again.”’ 
It is because religion is independent of any and all 
conceived ideals, that it provides the way by which 
men can transcend their limitations, and rise be- 
yond any and all conceived ideals to others that are 
more adequate to the demands of a changing human 
life. All our ideals, all our cherished values, are 
constructed out of our judgments, which always 
contain some error when applied to the vast, com- 
plex, concrete affairs of daily life. They not only 
fall short of the best; they have in them that error, 
that divergence from rectitude, which is the seed 
of death. That slight divergence, if too long con- 
tinued, leads to death. “They may be the best we 
have, excepting only God; but they are not God. 
Religious experience provides a way of salvation 
because it is a way up and out and beyond our 
ideals, 


OBJECTIVES VERSUS IDEALS 


For the most part tradition and illusion have 
shaped our living. We prate much of “‘ideals’’ but 
they have played only a small part in determining 
the manner of our response to the stimuli that 


280 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 


assail us and that organic process of adapting our- 
selves to environment which we call living. The 
most popular “‘ideals’’ about which we hear most 
talk, belong with the illusions. As illusions they 
do shape our lives, but this is not what is ordinarily 
meant by the shaping of life through “‘ideals.”” As 
illusions they enable us to conceal from our own 
consciousness the sordid motives which may actu- 
ate us. Or they serve to screen our consciousness 
from disagreeable facts in the environment. They 
help us to bolster up our self-respct; to glorify 
ourselves and others; to see things in a rosy light. 
It is plain, then, that these illusions, some of which 
are called ideals, and others not, do play a very 
important part in our living. Tradition, working 
in us in the form of habit, drives us on; but illu- 
sions brighten the path before us and make the 
going far more pleasant. Indeed, the false rosy 
light of illusion may make the path of traditional 
habit quite exhilarating. From earliest infancy the 
traditions of our time and people mould the organic 
process of our living into the form of certain habits. 
So our way of life is determined. But above us 
float illusions, some of which we call ideals, others 
we recognize to be nothing but pleasant fancies, 
while others we mistake to be facts. They are as 
a pillar of cloud by day, and of fire by night, which 
float before us. Our system of habits is undoubt- 
edly modified to some degree by these illusions, 
sometimes for the worse, sometimes for the better, 
But it is perhaps fortunate for us that the organic 


AND SCIENTIFIC METHOD 281 


process is not too greatly under the control of these 
illusions. 

What is the difference between an objective and 
an ideal? When an ideal begins to determine the 
actual organic process of living, so that one 
breathes, eats, digests his food, moves, sits, and 
stands in such a way as to sustain it, it is an objec- 
tive. But a great many “‘ideals,’’ perhaps most 
ideals, as they are popularly conceived and por- 
trayed, never could be objectives because, if the or- 
ganic process were shaped by them, life would end. 
The vital status could not be maintained. Or, if 
the animal objectives could still be maintained, the 
human objective of enlarging the fullness and range 
of environment to which adaptation is made, 
would be rendered impossible. In short, a great 
many ideals as popularly conceived, are impossible, 
not because they are so “‘high,’’ but because they 
are so worthless. “They are pleasant dreams with 
which to beguile the tedium. They are pleasant 
not bcause thy are so “‘lofty,’’ but because they 
provide a fairyland where certain of our repressed 
impulses can find imaginary fulfillment. These 
“ideals’’ are the stock materials with which some 
orators, some writers and artists entertain the 
crowd. ‘They enable us to forget our unpleasant 
surroundings, much as a drug might do. They 
“inspire us,’’ they exhilarate us, they console us, 
but they do not continuously and fully determine 
our striving and our doing. They are the ice cream 
and cake of life. But the bread and meat consist 


282 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 


of our objectives, both the animal and the distinc- . 
tively human. 

But when a civilization reaches maturity, as ours 
has done, and as the Greco-Roman did, it calls for 
something more than ideals that entertain and in- 
spire. It calls for a clarification of those facts by 
which and for which we live. It calls for objec- 
tives. As long as tradition sustains us, we can get 
along without knowledge of objectives. We can 
give our thoughts to the luxury of ideals; and be- 
cause of the meager, mean and impoverished life 
which tradition often imposes, these pleasant, fan- 
ciful illusions are indispensable to make our living 
humanly tolerable. We must deceive ourselves with 
‘Sdeals’’ in order to carry on. But when tradition 
breaks down, and we must direct our own life ac- 
cording to goods which we have deliberately chosen 
—when we thus pass from drift to mastery—we 
must know our objectives. We must know that 
actual good, the conservation and increase of which 
constitutes the good of living. Pleasant “‘ideals,”’ 
illusions, and dreams, however valuable in the 
past, no longer suffice. 


WHAT IS AN OBJECTIVE? 


By objective we mean, not an end result, but 
some satisfaction which is maintained, and may be 
increased, by those activities which we call living. 
For example, a certain quantitative proportion of 
oxygen and carbon dioxide must be kept in the air 
cells of the lungs. Our behavior, our rising, walk- 
ing, sleeping, eating, heart beating, blood circula- 


AND SCIENTIFIC METHOD 283 


tion, etc., are adjusted in such a way as to main- 
tain this composition of the air in the air cells. 
This is plainly an objective of living in the sense 
that all our activities are controlled in such a way 
as to provide this condition. Reacting to circum- 
stances in such a way as to maintain this condition 
is what is called adaptation to environment. Also 
a certain temperature of the body must be main- 
tained, and all our going and coming is adjusted 
in such a way as to keep this temperature without 
variation. This also is an objective. The same is 
true of a certain chemical composition of the blood. 
Here again all our organic processes, the metabolism 
of our food, as well as our thinking, our loving, 
our dreaming, our playing, our fighting, etc., are 
as a rule, adjusted in such a way as to protect and 
sustain this condition. The same is true of the in- 
tegrity of our organism. We strive to keep a whole 
skin. Our activities are all adjusted in such a way 
as to preserve the organism from harm. So this 
also is one of the objectives of living. So likewise 
with other vital conditions. The objective of liv- 
ing is to provide, preserve, and magnify the con- 
ditions which living requires. The objective of 
living is to preserve and magnify itself. 

What we have described are objectives of animal 
living, and humans share these objectives with the 
lower animals. But humans have also other objec- 
tives. We call the man-beast human because of 
that way of life which he sometimes pursues, and 
to which he may give himself in ever larger measure 


284 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 


under proper nurture and favorable conditions. 
Man is sporadically human, but not consistently so. 
The objectives, then, which characterize human 
living, must not be represented as controlling the 
whole life of man; and at times they do not con- 
trol any part of his living. At times, and perhaps 
for more of the time than is commonly thought, 
the purely animal objectives are sufficient to account 
for all that he does. 

The animal objective is to preserve life while 
the human is to develop more abundant life. To 
live means to react to environment in such a way 
as to maintain such vital conditions as air in the air 
cells, a certain composition of the blood, tempera- 
ture, organic integrity, etc. To live more abund- 
antly means to maintain these vital conditions in 
reaction to a more ample environment. To live 
humanly is to engage in the progressive organiza- 
tion of an ever more complex system of habits by 
which one reacts to an ever larger portion of the 
world. Distinctive human behavior is that con- 
tinuous variation of behavior which provides for 
the needs of the organism in adaptation to an ever 
wider and fuller environment. The animal reacts 
to the environment only in so far as necessary to 
meet the needs of the organism; the human meets 
the needs of the organism in order to react to ever 
more of environment. This difference holds true, 
of course, only when the human is truly different 
from the lower animals. But he is not always dif- 
ferent. 


ee 


AND SCIENTIFIC METHOD 285 
OBJECTIVES VERSUS TRADITION 


During most of the time our race has lived on 
this planet men have not asked why they followed 
the beaten path before them, nor whether there 
were other better ways, nor whether the labor of 
going on was worth the cost, nor what the goods 
they sought. It was the path of tradition they fol- 
lowed; and the system of habits, ground into them 
from earliest infancy, kept their feet in the narrow 
way. ‘Theirs not to reason why, theirs but to do 
and die.” The tradition they followed was grad- 
ually accumulated throughout many generations 
without any particular plan or purpose. Or per- 
haps it would be more correct to say that the tradi- 
tion had been developed throughout many years 
under many different conflicting plans and pur- 
poses. It always served in a general way to pre- 
serve the biological existence of those who followed 
it; for those who followed traditions that did not 
do this perished, and their traditions with them. 
No doubt these traditions provided for many other 
goods over and above the biological, but this they 
have never done consistently nor in the most eco- 
nomical fashion. Yet most men in all times and 
among all peoples have followed some such tradi- 
tion. 

On either side of the beaten way of tradition 
have been many pleasant things to be had. But 
for the most part men have turned neither to the 
right hand nor to the left. They have not even 
seen these pleasant things. They have seen only 


286 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 


the road straight in front of them and the dust be- 
neath their feet. They have been too busy to note 
anything else. They have been carrying such 
heavy burdens, or have been so sorely pressed to 
keep from being trampled under foot by the 
throng, that they have not had opportunity to lift 
their eyes and look around. They have not asked: 
Wherefore all this suffering and doing? What good 
are we conserving or creating? They have simply 
stolidly gone their way. If ever the question, 
What’s the use? rose to the fringe of consciousness, 
they put it quickly from them. Such a question is 
too disturbing. It destroys all contentment in liv- 
ing. It takes the zest and force from all doing. It 
sometimes leads to suicide and insanity. It makes 
for social unrest and impairs the smooth working 
of the social machinery. Hence the question is 
abhorred both by those who profit by the estab- 
lished social order and by those who are oppressed 
by it. 

But there have been a few rare times when the 
burdens borne have been lightened by machinery 
or slavery; and the absorbing attention to keep 
trom being trampled under foot has been relieved 
by reason of a more stable social order and protec- 
tion from foreign aggression. If such a time of 
prosperity and peace happened to coincide with a 
certain ripeness of civilization, in which the accum- 
ulated experience of the race could be transmitted 
to the individual in such manner as to give him 
insight and reach of thought, the great question 
has been raised: What is the good of living? 


AND SCIENTIFIC METHOD 287 
Why this sacrifice? Why this devotion? Why 


follow this inconvenient or devious route? Why 
this custom or this form of conduct? Why suffer 
and toil? So arises the age of sophistication. 

Now as long as this question concerning the 
values and objectives of human living is limited to 
a few only, who are very old and experienced, or 
have a peculiar philosophical bent, or are especially 
provided with leisure, it is not a serious matter. As 
long as tradition serves to shape the lives of the 
great mass of men during youth and middle man- 
hood, the question concerning the objectives of 
human living is largely an academic one. But 
when sophistication reaches any large number of 
men, especially the youth and middle aged, upon 
whom rest the loads of life and the control of the 
social process, and when these begin to criticize the 
traditional way, asking the why and wherefore of 
it, and examining to see if there be not some other 
better way, then the question concerning the good 
of living becomes a very urgent one. Then tradi- 
tion begins to crumble and fails to serve as the stay 
of life. 

Our Western civilization, perhaps one may say 
the world’s civilization, has reached such a time as 
this or is fast approaching it. Traditions still hold, 
of course; but the flood that threatens their stability 
is trickling over the top of the dykes, and beneath 
it the dykes are crumbling. The opening may 
widen and deepen and the torrent pour through. 
After us, perhaps, the deluge. The halo that once 
hovered over the state, the home, industry, and the 


288 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 


country, is gone. It is shown to be an illusion. 
The great values which once we thought we saw 
in these things are torn away in modern essay and 
fiction. There is for the present a zest and joy in 
tearing away fictions and laying bare the facts, un- 
adorned and indubitable. But will this zest and 
joy continue? Not if the zest and joy consists 
merely in tearing away of the illusions, for in the 
course of time there will be no more illusions to 
tear away. The joy of living can continue only if 
in the facts themselves can be found absorbing 
values. But if the childish delight of destroying 
shams is our only delight, our end is near. 

Now in such a time as this, ideals cannot be wor- 
shipped simply because we must commit our lives 
to them and thus bring to light the inadequacy and 
illusion that is in them. As long as we committed 
our lives to tradition we could worship ideals and 
identify religion with idealism because the ideals 
were not put to the test of actual life. In our con- 
fused thinking the ideals could serve as symbols of 
God; and as the idol worshipper may truly wor- 
ship God through the symbolism of his idol, not 
thinking clearly enough to make distinctions, so we 
also could worship God through our ideals. But 
there comes a time when idol worshipping is dan- 
gerous and destructive to genuine religion, just be- 
cause people begin to see through it; and there 
comes a time when ideal worshipping is dangerous 
and destructive in like manner. We have reached 
such a time. “The worship of ideals is a form of 
(dolatry that can no longer satisfy the need of our 


AND SCIENTIFIC METHOD 289 


time. The ideals that inspired a decade ago have 
turned to chaff in our mouths. We have a reli- 
gious hunger, and if it be not satisfied we are un- 
done. We demand a degree of religious certainty 
such as no other time ever demanded. With the 
new scientific method that has come into our pos- 
session and our present ripeness of experience and 
sophistication, we are overhauling all our old be- 
liefs and holding up to scorn all the old idols and 
bugaboos that charmed or frightened into con- 
formity a more credulous age. Nothing but reli- 
gious certainty will satisfy us. Where and how 
shall we find it in the light of modern psychology 
and scientific method? That is the problem we 
have been considering in preceding chapters. 


CHAP TER wd 
CHRISTIANITY AND PSYCHOLOGY 


Perhaps the two most striking influences at work 
today in the field of the psychology of religion are 
the Freudian theories and the work of William 
James. We do not mean that they are the most 
valuable. Certainly the Freudian theories, how- 
ever illuminating they have been in bringing human 
nature into the light, have been full of quite fan- 
tastic ideas, undisciplined by scientific method. 
But because of the great influence of these two 
strains of thought we must consider them at some 
length. While our criticism of the Newer Psychol- 
ogy, as it is presented by some of its advocates, 
will be quite severe, we should be greatly misunder- 
stood if it was thought we did not appreciate the 
great service these theories have rendered in giving 
us a better understanding of the human being. In- 
deed we think they have rendered an inestimable 
service. | 

Vagrant impulses, old habits, and instincts do 
certainly at times manifest themselves in our 
dreams, and at other times when we are off our 
guard. Because these characteristics do display 
themselves at such times, it has been maintained 
that these impulses are always in us; that they re- 


290 


AND SCIENTIFIC METHOD 291 


main suppressed in some unconscious region of our 
natures, (in the “‘unconscious mind’’) and spring 
forth in sleep or in the moment of shock, because 
the system of habits which ordinarily suppresses 
them is then relaxed or disrupted. But this occa- 
sional breaking forth of impulses in dreams and 
shock does not necessarily prove that these im- 
pulses continue all the time in some repressed region 
of mind, organically active but prevented by the 
censor from shaping behavior and consciousness. 
On the contrary it would seem to prove that, when 
we are asleep or at other times when these errant 
impulses show themselves, the organic system of 
response that controls our normal life, has become 
temporarily disorganized. Excitement, weariness, 
sleep or illness or shock may disrupt the controll- 
ing system of response which we commonly call the 
prevailing character of the man. With this disrup- 
tion, certain responses are released from control 
and operate independently. Being no longer under 
the control of the organic system of conduct, these 
released responses may follow old “‘paths.’’ They 
may revert to the form in which they were origi- 
nally established. If as a child I learned to hang 
my hat in a certain place, I may under stress of 
great excitement, or somnambulism, try to hang 
my hat at the old place even though I have been 
hanging it elsewhere for many years. This does 
not mean that all these years I have suppressed an 
impulse to hang my hat there. It only means that 
the present crisis has disrupted my system of habits 
and this particular response, when thus thrown out 


pg. RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 


of the system, reverts to the old course of proce- 
dure. Hence at these times, when the system of 
habits are disrupted, we have reversions to the 
primitive, the infantile, or to the behavior of any 
bygone time that has made a deep impression upon 
us. Of course this disruption may not be limited 
to special occasions but may be more or less chronic. 
Chronic disruption, however, is not so widespread 
among normal people, we believe, as some Freud- 
ians seem to teach. 

The whole matter may be summed up by say- 
ing: Habitual responses fall into a system, but in 
so far as it is a distinctively human system, it is con- 
stantly developing into greater complexity. ‘This 
means that new impulses are aroused, and old ones 
modified, by reason of our response to additional 
features in the total situation to which we are 
adapting ourselves. These new impulses must be 
assimilated into the system of habits. If they are 
not assimilated, or until they are assimilated, they 
conflict with the established habits. Now this con- 
flict may be overcome or avoided by the continu- 
ous adjustment of these new impulses to fit the sys- 
tem of habits. ‘This is what is meant by assimila- 
tion. [his means the progressive organization of 
an ever more complex system of habits. This 
means coming into converse with ever more of the 
fullness of the world. This means progressive 
adaptation to an ever more ample environment, 
entering into a fuller life. 

But this continuous readjustment and assimila- 
tion of new impulses into old systems of habit 


AND SCIENTIFIC METHOD fag 


rarely is perfect in its operation. Some new im- 
pulses resist adjustment to the old habits; and some 
old habits are too rigid to be modified in the man- 
ner required for assimilation. Then occurs con- 
flict. Sometimes the impulse is suppressed. Some- 
times certain habits are suppressed. Then arises 
mental aberation and distress of mind. There is 
loss of poise and peace. One finds himself working 
against a sort of mental friction. Efficiency is im- 
paired. There is a strain and tension about the 
organism which bodes ill for happiness and power. 

All the responses or habits that go to make up 
the life of an individual may be divided into the 
codperative and the antagonistic. Codperative are 
those that work together in a single system. The 
antagonistic are those that conflict with this sys- 
tem. ‘The antagonistic habits may themselves form 
a system which runs counter to the first, or they 
may be merely vagrant impulses. In extreme cases 
the counter system constitutes what is called a dual 
personality. 

Now these conflicting impulses or habits, if 
persistently prevented from fulfillment because of 
their antagonism with the prevailing bent of the 
individual, may distort one’s thinking and percep- 
tion. Above all they may shape one’s dreams. 
‘They may cause one to build air castles, which must 
be very carefully distinguished from that construc- 
tive work of the imagination in which one maps 
out programs of action and interprets the imme- 
diate data of experience. ‘These air castles are not 
programs of action but are the exact opposite. 


2194 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 


They are constructed precisely in order to make 
programs of action unnecessary; to soothe and pac- 
ify these suppressed impulses which might other- 
wise disrupt the prevailing bent of character. 
Such air castles differ from constructive imagina- 
tion in two ways. ‘They are pacifiers rather than 
guides to action; and they serve to conceal the facts 
from consciousness rather than inform the con- 
sciousness concerning facts by suggesting verifiable 
theories. 

Now of late it has become the vogue among fol- 
lowers of Freud and Jung and Brill to represent all 
religion, or the greater part of it, as such a work of 
phantasy. Religion, they say, is the great air castle, 
collectively constructed by the fancy of many gen- 
erations, handed down for centuries, constantly 
readapted and embroidered by the fancy of each 
age, sustained by an army of officials and mighty 
institutions and always shaped to provide a ficti- 
tious fulfillment to impulses which are frustrated 
by the facts of life. It is the great game of bunkum 
which the human race has developed for the pur- 
pose of “‘kidding itself’’ into thinking the world is 
nearer to the heart’s desire than in fact it is. It is 
the Great Myth which is dearer to the human heart 
than any fact could ever be. 

Instead of treating this “psychology of religion’ 
in a general way, we think it will add to clearness 
and explicitness if we give our attention to one 
typical exponent of this view. Everett Dean Mar- 
tin has very recently expounded and defended this 
theory in The Mystery of Religion. Let us briefly 


AND SCIENTIFIC METHOD 295 


examine this book. But let us say at the start, that 
while we do not agree with its major conclusions, 
there are certainly flashes of true insight here and 
there, and all that he says might well be applied 
to certain instances of religion (or pseudo-religion, 
some would say). For there is a romantic and 
sentimental religion just as there is a romantic and 
sentimental art, and love and history and patriot- 
ism, and sociology and psychology and everything 
else that man may undertake. or man does not 
leave his sentimentality and romanticism behind 
him even when he takes up the study of Freudian 
Psychology. 


The tendency has been too strong, especially on 
the part of thinkers who have grown up in Prot- 
estant communities and have been influenced by 
nineteenth century natural science, to regard re- 
ligion as an affair of ideas, ‘Traditional beliefs, 
dogma, and myth, which have come down to us 
from an earlier time, and are of course out of har- 
mony, when taken literally, with the naturalism 
of our age, are regarded by these thinkers as merely 
crude attempts at a rational explanation of nature 
and life, made by simple people who, alas, could 
not know as much about the world as ‘‘scientific’’ 
moderns know. [But, says Martin, these fabri- 
cations are] cherished generation after generation 
to be an escape from the very reality into which 
modernism would fain now confine the objects of 
religious interest !+ 


What Martin says is no doubt true of many 


1 Everett Dean Martin, The Mystery of Religion, p. 9. 


296 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 


religious people. But is it true of religion per se? 
In answer to that question we must make certain 
distinctions which Martin has failed to make. 

It is true that these “‘beliefs, dogma, myth,”’ 
cherished by religion and handed down by tradi- 
tion are not bona fide attempts to ‘‘give a rational 
explanation of nature’ in terms of physics or chem- 
istry. They are not attempts to explain the data 
of experience treated by physics and chemistry any 
more than biology is such an attempt. Biology 
deals with different data from physics and chem- 
istry and the “‘explanations’’ of the latter are not 
applicable to the biological data. Nor is the bio- 
logical explanation applicable to the psychological, 
because the latter seeks explanation of a still differ- 
ent datum. Of course the different sciences can be 
of enormous assistance to one another; but it is a 
narrow and obtuse mind that tries to reduce one to 
the other. Now the “‘beliefs, dogma, and myth” 
cherished by religious tradition are not attempts to 
explain the data of any of these sciences. “They are 
attempts to explain a wholly different kind of 
datum, the datum of religious experience. The 
several recognized sciences can help immensely in 
our attempts to understand this datum of religious 
experience, but until we get a science which can 
study this datum without reducing it to the data 
peculiar to some other science, we cannot give a 
scientific explanation of it, any more than physics 
can give a satisfactory explanation of the living 
organism, rendering biology superfluous. 

It is for this reason, and only for this reason that 


AND SCIENTIFIC METHOD 297 


the effort “‘to square these old beliefs with modern 
knowledge’ results in failure. It is not because 
these beliefs serve to delude, and men want to be 
deluded; it is not because religion is a fairy tale 
which men refuse to relinquish because it pleases 
them more than fact. But it is because these beliefs 
are sincere attempts, guesses if you will, to discover 
the true significance of certain data of experience; 
and they cannot be reduced to any of the recog- 
nized sciences of the day for the same reason that 
psychology cannot be reduced to chemistry pure 
and simple. ‘The science adapted to the investiga- 
tion of the religious problem has not yet attained 
maturity. It is still in the womb of philosophy, 
which is the mother of all the sciences. 

Martin is perfectly correct when he says that 
religious beliefs cannot be reduced to sociological 
theories, as some would try to do. Sociology per- 
haps comes closer to the religious datum of experi- 
ence than any other science, because its datum is the 
most complex. In the sociological datum is merged 
the data of all the earlier sciences. But the religious 
datum is even more complex than the sociological. 
and the reason why Christianity cannot be reduced 
to sociology is not because it is a cherished myth, 
as Martin asserts, but for the reason mentioned. In 
the heyday of physics there were certain moderns 
who tried to reduce Christianity to physics and 
taught that God was the Great First Cause. Of 
late, when biology and evolution have captured 
the imagination of the scientific mind, there are 
some who want to interpret God as the vital urge, 


298 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 


the creative impulse in evolution, a biological entity. 
In other words, they try to deal with the datum 
of religious experience as though it were a biologi- 
cal datum. And now in our own time there are 
“hot little men’? who would make the object of 
religious experience identical with society. But 
surely we will learn some day that no science can 
adequately treat data that lie outside its field. It 
is always a mistake to consider the raw experience 
entering awareness as ‘‘nothing but’ the data of 
some special science. Raw experience, prior to 
analysis, is not a datum which any science can 
treat. Hence religious belief cannot be reduced to 
the terms of modern science. Martin is right in 
this, but his own theory is quite as bad. 


We are sure that Martin is correct in the follow- 
ing statement:? ‘“Whenever people discuss the 
question of religion as if it were primarily the prob- 
lem of the nature and process of Creation—for in- 
stance, whether Genesis or the Origin of Spectes 
gives us a correct account of the appearance of the 
varied forms of plant and animal life, or whether 
the protozoan process of parthenogenesis may ex- 
plain also the story of the virgin birth of Christ— 
you may be sure that they have forgotten for the 
time what religion is really about.”’ With all this 
we heartily agree. But if we added the very next 
sentence that follows, we would have to disagree. 
Religion is not ‘‘about’’ the matters treated by mod- 
ern science. But neither is it about a myth. Nei- 
ther is it about something outside sense experience. 


2op. cit. p. 21. 


AND SCIENTIFIC METHOD 299 


But the datum of sense which religion is ‘“‘about’’ 
is too complex for any of our sciences to interpret. 
Hence the best we can do is to interpret our experi- 
ence by some “‘belief.”” We may invent some new- 
fangled little belief of our own or accept a belief 
handed down from the greatest religious teachers of 
history, but some belief we must have if we are to 
get any meaning at all out of our experience, since 
no science is available. Martin makes a very inter- 
esting and suggestive comparison between the scien- 
tific concept, which he considers a symbol, and the 
religious belief, dogma, or formula, which is also 
asymbol. The analogy he uses is that of the map 
and the flag as being, respectively, symbols of 
United States.* ‘‘Each of these may be used to rep- 
resent one country, to bring its reality to our minds. 
Each is a humanity-created device, the use of which 
makes it easy for us to conceive in some way of the 
teality for which it stands, and to behave in a cer- 
tain way toward that reality. Yet neither is that 
reality, nor in fact at all like it.’ The map is a 
utilitarian symbol, enabling us 


to orient ourselves practically to the reality which 
we call United States. Yet the map does not rep- 
resent the country any more truly than does the 
flag. The latter symbol—and none will deny 
that it is a symbol—stands for certain emotions 
and ideals. It is in these respects—and very real 
they are, too—that the flag means America to us. 
It is this America which inspires men’s devotion 
and their pride in the country. . . . The flag 


3 op. cit. p. 34 ff, 


300 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 


orients us emotionally to America. Both these 
symbols stand for the same America, yet they 
represent very differnet interests, and have different 
uses. The map might be termed the ‘scientific’ 
symbol, and the flag the “‘religious’’ symbol. The 
map is an instrument of those adaptations to re- 
ality which consist of external movements, going 
to certain places, shipping materials, sending mes- 
sages, etc. The flag stands for those forms of 
adaptation that emanate from within. Here, too, 
there is overt behavior, but it is, or should be, 
behavior dominated by unseen values, rather than 
by objective considerations. 


He adds that the map involves directed thinking 
while the flag stands for free association. Directed 
thinking solves problems, discovers the correct 
means to desired ends, deals with a ‘world of objec- 
tive realities.” Free association is dreaming, the 
play of fancy, arising out of the conflict of wishes 
and the attempt to solve these conflicts by means of 
air castles. 

We must study this interesting analogy with 
some care, for we believe it contains the thought of 
the entire book put into a nut shell. 

In the first place the map does not symbolize the 
whole of United States. United States is not 
merely ‘‘a geographical expression.’’ But the map 
does not even symbolize all the geographical fea- 
tures. A few—a very, very few compared to the 
concrete totality of American geography—have 
been selected because of their practical importance 
in guiding our travels; and these few features, 


EE ee 


~ AND SCIENTIFIC METHOD 301 


these data, are symbolized by the map to the exclu- 
sion of everything else. In this respect the map is 
a perfect example of the scientific concept which, 
as we have seen, abstracts a few data from the 
wealth of concrete experience, and carefully plots 
the space-time relations of these to the exclusion of 
everything else. 

But how about the flag? Does it symbolize 
nothing but illusions, fancies, and fictions? To 
be sure it does symbolize these. But is that all? Is 
the United States, symbolized by the flag, not a 
fact? Is it only a dream? Is it the product of 
“free association,’ a castle in Spain? Manifestly 
that is absurd. Part, at least, of that symbolized 
by the flag is out there in space and time, as truly 
as that symbolized by the map. But the symbol- 
ism of the flag differs from that of the map in two 
ways, which we must define and distinguish with 
care. 

Whatever else the symbolism of the flag may in- 
clude, it refers to an object, which is just as inde- 
pendent of the individual’s dreams and wishes as 
those meager geographical features symbolized by 
the map. But the difference is that the fact or 
object symbolized by the flag is far more complex, 
immeasurably richer in detail and concrete fullness, 
than is the object symbolized by the map. The 
flag properly symbolizes the concrete totality of 
United States precisely as it is and without those 
exclusions and abstractions involved in the symbol- 
ism of the map. In this respect the flag symbolizes 
the ‘‘real’’ United States while the map does not. 


302 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 


But there is another respect in which it can be 
said that the flag does represent myth, fancy, and 
guess, while the map represents things as they are. 
The concrete totality of United States is far too 
complex and vast for us to cognize. We have no 
adequate concept with which clearly to think it. 
We cannot doubt that it is; but just what it is we 
do not know. Most of our concepts by which we 
think it must be guesses, theories, and dreams, be- 
cause we have not yet developed the scientific 
method which is adequate to test the correctness of 
our ideas of such a complex totality. Consequently 
our ideas about United States, both its present 
status and its future destiny, must contain a great 
deal of error. And where scientific method is not 
available to correct our thinking, there will cer- 
tainly creep into it a great deal of distortion due 
to our own wishes. 

But right here another important distinction 
must be made. It depends on the individual 
whether his ideas concerning the United States, 
symbolized by the flag, are tentative but sincere 
theories concerning the character of his country 
held subject to verification, or whether they are 
‘llusions carefully preserved in the face of contrary 
evidence. I think we are all well enough acquainted 
with these two kinds of patriots. None of us are 
altogether free of illusions to which we cling, espe- 
cially where scientific methods of verification are 
not available, or, for that matter, where they are; 
but to say that the flag is for all people preémi- 


AND SCIENTIFIC METHOD 303 


nently a means of sustaining certain illusions and 
concealing fact, is certainly a gross error. 

Now all this applies precisely to the difference 
between the scientific concept and the religious be- 
lief. It depends upon the individual whether his 
religious symbols are cherished for the sake of 
blinding his eyes to the truth; or whether they are 
his sincere and earnest gropings after the true sig- 
nificance of certain data of experience which are so 
complex that no scientific method is yet able to dis- 
tinguish with certainty between truth and error. 
But the object of religious experience is just as in- 
dubitably an object, independent of human fan- 
cies, as is the United States. Just what it is, we 
cannot be sure; but that it is, we cannot doubt. 
The religious datum is given; and it is more cer- 
tain than the seemingly verified concepts of science. 
In this sense the religious symbol most certainly 
does not represent an illusion or a dream. 

We need not follow Mr. Martin through all his 
expositions of religious doctrines, ceremonies, 
hymns, prayers, institutions. He applies all the 
elaborate paraphernalia of psychoanalysis and 
Freudian psychology, the Oedipus complex and 
Electra complex, the libido and its regression, 
infantilism, the Father image and Mother image, 
etc., etc. The church is symbolic of mother and 
symbolically satisfies the craving to return to be 
with the mother, if not actually in the mother, 
which is said to be an almost universal trait of 
human beings. The erotic motive is found in 
such songs as, “Jesus, lover of my soul, let me to 


304 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 


Thy bosom fly,” “I heard the voice of Jesus say, 
come unto Me and rest, Lay down, thou weary 
one, lay down thy head upon My breast.” 


Leave your sins and come to Jesus; 
He will enfold you in his arms, 
In the arms of my dear Saviour 
O there are ten thousand charms. 


In all this he sees a symbolic imaginative fulfill- 
ment of the sexual impulse. Indeed he thinks it 
is so indubitably manifest that it is beyond discus- 
sion. No doubt his interpretation is correct with 
respect to individual cases. But here again we see 
too wide generalization. Unquestionably these 
words are symbolic. But do they always symbolize 
the same thing? As a fact unscientific symbolism, 
(and this is certainly unscientific) , is the most vari- 
able and vague pointer imaginable. Different peo- 
ple mean most different things when using the 
same words. But such symbolism is far more vari- 
able between individuals, and in the usage of the 
same individual at different times, than are ordi- 
nary words. 

Perhaps the background of Mr. Martin’s thought 
is best revealed at the beginning of the last chap- 
ter. After describing the aspect of land and sea on 
a beautiful August afternoon he says: 


Why cannot the life of man be like this? Why 
must we invent fictions in order to live, in order 
to find the meaning and value of our world? 
Why are we different from those flowers which 
fill this summer day with their own fragrance and 


AND SCIENTIFIC METHOD 305 


color, or those waves which fall upon the shore, 
breaking and receding and content with their in- 
evitability? . . . Other things in nature are 
complete; they are what they are; we are not. We 
must find the meaning and value of our lives in 
fiction and illusion. We must find escape and 
compensation where other living things are con- 
tent with reality. Reality for us is but half hos- 
pitable, Over it we have woven the web of civ- 
ilization and set the ends of self-consciousness, and 
between that which man has achieved—and nec- 
essarily so—and that which he is by nature, 
compromise must be made. There is no return to 
nature for us. The meaning of life for us is no 
longer to be realized in the mere fact of living. 
We must create. 


Here he has raised most interesting and profound 
questions. His failure to answer them, is what has 
led him so far astray in his attempts to interpret 
religion. Or rather his failure to discover the true 
meaning of religion is what renders these questions 
so baffling to him. If he knew the nature of reli- 
gion, he could solve these problems. Let us con- 
sider them, for we believe they lie at the root of his 
whole difficulty. Since his psychology makes 
human nature appear more incomprehensible than 
ever, there is plainly something wrong with his 
psychology. 

Why can man not be content to deal with things 
as they are, as do the flowers and the beasts? We 
might answer the question in many different ways. 
But let us keep as close to biology as we can. It is 


306 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 


because man is sensitive to so many different stimuli 
from the environment that he is confused. Or, 
putting it in other words, it is because so many dif- 
ferent impulses are awakened within him under 
normal conditions that they conflict with one an- 
other. Or, putting the same matter in still other 
words, it is because he is physiologically so consti- 
tuted that he must constantly react to an ever wider 
and fuller environment. It is because of this that 
his deepest urge is for adaptation to a more diversi- 
fied and ample world. His most characteristic pro- 
pensity is toward more abundant life. 

It is a mistake to think that man primarily flees 
from reality, that he first of all craves to ornament 
the world of fact with fictions. The fictions of the 
child, for instance, are not cherished illusions. 
They are very different from those hallucinations 
which the psychiatrist finds in the diseased mind. 
The fictions of the child are his groping efforts to 
deal with that large world of fact which he discerns 
round about him but which is beyond his reach. 
His fictions, instead of being flights from reality, 
are his nearest approaches to reality. By means of 
them he is trying to get closer to the world of fact, 
rather than farther from it. No, man’s bent is to 
bring his multiplying impulses to fulfillment in 
reaction to the multiplying stimuli that assail him. 
But this is an exceedingly difficult undertaking. 
If he is successful he develops an ever more complex 
system of habits in adaptation to an ever widening 
and diversifying environment. But if he is unsuc- 
cessful, either one of two things may happen. But 


AND SCIENTIFIC METHOD 307 


before mentioning these two possibilities, we must 
understand that success is always a relative matter. 
No man is absolutely, unqualifiedly successful. 
And perhaps all men share to some degree these 
two forms of failure. 

One form of failure is to have the multiplying 
impulses deadened; to allow the imprisoning crust 
of routine habit gradually to harden; to degenrate 
into an automatic system of habits, adapted, it may 
be, to a few elements of the immediate environ- 
ment, but unresponsive to anything else. One who 
suffers this failure, becoming a brother to the ox, 
does truly approximate that blissful state of the 
flowers and beasts. For their contentment and 
peace amount to nothing more than this; ‘that their 
unchanging responses are adapted to a few meager 
elements of their immediate environment to the 
exclusion of everything else. They are alive only 
to this minimum degree, for to be alive means to 
respond; and they respond to the very fewest pos- 
sible stimuli necessary to escape destruction and 
decay. ‘They are content simply because they have 
no urge toward more abundant life. 

The second kind of failure is the fiction-making 
of which Martin has so much to say. It arises 
when man is unable to bring all his impulses to 
fulfillment, precisely because they are so many and 
diverse. He must content himself with fulfillment 
of those which he has been able to harmonize, sup- 
pressing the others. “These suppressed impulses do 
give rise to constructions of the fancy, to illusions 
and distortions of thought. 


308 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 


But it is when we come to the relatively normal 
and successful man, that the Freudians are most at 
fault. This mistake is to think that a fiction is 
always constructed and cherished for the sake of 
the fiction. On the contrary a fiction, first of all, 
isa theory. It is a groping out into the unknown. 
It is an attempt to discover that bigger fact which 
encompasses one, and which one has experienced, 
but has not clearly cognized. There is no other 
way of discovering that bigger fact, there is no 
other way of adapting oneself to that larger, fuller 
world that is about, except by means of such theo- 
ries. One must first form an hypothesis subject 
to verification. But with respect to the most of our 
theories we do not yet have a scientific technique 
which is able to test their truth. That being the 
case there are just two alternatives open to us. One 
is to cease to hold any theory at all about such mat- 
ters, and to exclude them altogether from consid- 
eration; to settle down to a humdrum existence 
in adaptation to those few elements of environ- 
ment which are most immediate, simple and cer- 
tain. In other words, cease to strive toward the 
more abundant life except where assured scientific 
method can guide us. The other alternative is to 
strive constantly toward those inadequately known 
but experienced facts; to hold to whatever theory 
will keep one in converse with them, until one can 
get more light. 

Now of course there are all degrees and grada- 
tions between such theories, which are sincere grop- 
ings after fact, and mere phantasy which is cher- 


AND SCIENTIFIC METHOD 309 


ished for its own sake and for the purpose of con- 
cealing facts. No doubt there are many cases where 
men cherish the fiction for its own sake, because it 
is a fiction, and because they do not want to know 
the facts. But this is not nearly so common as some 
would think. And often the surface appearance 
will give that impression when a deeper study will 
show that the individual is truly reacting to certain 
facts by means of a very inadequate theory; and 
his tenacity to this theory is not due to love of fic- 
tion but to unwillingness to allow this dim fact to 
slip from him forever, this theory being the only 
hold he has upon it. We who may not have any 
sense of that fact, or, more commonly still, cannot 
see how that theory serves to reveal that fact to 
him, think that he is stubbornly holding to a fic- 
tion because it is a fiction and nothing else. 

Now this significance of theory, especially when 
applied to the object of religious experience, Mr. 
Martin and the Freudians seem to have overlooked 
quite completely. There is some excuse for this 
misunderstanding of religious people because these 
people are often unwilling to admit that their be- 
liefs are theories. “hey insist with extreme dog- 
matism that their beliefs are absolute certainties. 
But there is good reason for this. The Object 
which these people experience, and which they 
strive to cognize through such beliefs, is not acces- 
sible to them by any other beliefs. It becomes, 
then, for them, a matter of giving up all converse 
with this object or else holding on to the belief, 
however crude it may be. Until we have some 


310 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 


method for adequately testing by scientific methods 
our beliefs concerning the object of religious experi- 
ence, this attitude is likely to be common. 

But most important of all is the fact that these 
dogmatic religious people often use these beliefs as 
symbols or guides in entering into the mystic ex- 
perience of God. The beliefs then become instru- 
ments by which they enter into the experience of a 
certain object, instead of theories for cognizing that 
object. Their training and habits may be such 
that they cannot enter into this experience in any 
other way. These symbols are devices by which 
they throw themselves into that mental attitude of 
wide-open awareness which we have seen to be 
requisite for the experiencing of God. The psychol- 
ogy of such mental devices is perfectly intelligible 
and in no way militates against the “‘reality’’ of the 
ensuing experience. Hence the tenacity with which 
such people hold to their beliefs, dogmas, and sym- 
bols of whatever sort, is not a case of mulish stub- 
bornness, much less a love of fiction for its own 
sake; but it is a clinging to an indispensable instru- 
ment. They hold to such beliefs as a householder 
might hold on to the only key he has by which to 
enter his home. It is not a matter of the key’s 
being false or true. False and true do not apply 
at all, even though the person involved may think 
it a matter of true and false. It is simply a matter 
of keeping the only key he has for opening the door 
into a certain region of experience. ‘This experi- 
ence is experience of fact; but it is not knowledge 


AND SCIENTIFIC METHOD Sit 


of fact. There is no way to certain knowledge 
save by verified theory. 

We feel that Mr. Martin misconstrues the nature 
of religion. But in doing so he has merely fol- 
lowed a prevalent Freudian view of religion. 


WILLIAM JAMES 


Let us now turn to the psychology of Christian- 
ity represented by William James. Ever since his 
Gifford lectures on ‘Varieties of Religious Experi- 
ence’ he has probably shaped the psychology of 
religion more than any other. 

The wonderful thing about William James, that 
makes his work of such incomparable value, was 
that intellectual honesty that enabled him to ob- 
serve accurately and record fairly all the facts that 
came to his attention, without allowing his own 
theories to distort or obscure them. There was 
about him an intellectual humility that was also 
the highest kind of nobility, for he would present 
those aspects of the matter which revealed the in- 
adequacy of all his own thinking and then would 
calmly admit that there were mysteries he had not 
begun to fathom. And he would throw out sug- 
gestions that would have brought ridicule upon a 
smaller man from the representatives of scientific 
thought; not because his suggestions were necessa- 
rily ridiculous, but because the advocates of the 
prevailing scientific theory are sometimes so doc- 
trinaire that they ridicule one who dares to depart 
too far from the prevailing mode. James dared 


such ridicule. Above all, he had that childlike 


312 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 


spirit that continued to grow and develop new ideas 
to the very end—new ideas that rendered his earlier 
theories untenable. 


At the last William James hit upon his radical 
empiricism. We believe, if he had lived long 
enough to recast his earlier thought in the light of 
this latest view, he would have revised statements 
in Varieties of Religious Experience, such as the 
following: 


Psychology and religion are thus in perfect 
harmony up to this point, since both admit that 
there are forces seemingly outside of the conscious 
individual that bring redemption to his life. 
Nevertheless psychology, defining these forces as 
*“‘subconscious,’’ and speaking of their effects as due 
to “incubation,” or “‘cerebration,’’ implies that 
they do not transcend the individual’s personality; 
and herein she diverges from Christian theology, 
which insists that they are direct supernatural 
operations of the Deity. I propose to you that we 
do not yet consider this divergence final, but leave 
the question for a while in abeyance—continued 
inquiry may enable us to get rid of some of the 
apparent discord.* 


We believe that his radical empiricism, consist- 
ently applied to interpretation of religious experi- 
ence, would have brought him much closer to 
Christian theology than this. But let us see how 
his ‘‘continued inquiry”’ gets “‘rid of some of the 
apparent discord.’”’ On page 242 he says: 


4p. 211. 


AND SCIENTIFIC METHOD DES 


But if you, being orthodox Christians, ask me 
as a psychologist, whether the reference of a phe- 
nomenon to a subliminal self does not exclude the 
notion of direct presence of the Deity altogether, 
I have to say frankly that as a psychologist I do 
not see why it necessarily should. The lower 
manifestations of the Subliminal, indeed, fall 
within the resources of the personal subject: his 
ordinary sense-material, inattentively taken in and 
subconsciously remembered and combined, will 
account for all his usual automatisms. But just 
as our primary wide-awake consciousness throws 
open our senses to the touch of things material, 
so it is logically conceivable that if there be higher 
spiritual agencies that can directly touch us, the 
psychological condition of their doing so might be 
our possession of a subconscious region which alone 
should yield access to them. The hubbub of the 
waking life might close a door which in the dreamy 
Subliminal might remain ajar or open. 


This suggestion of James has been seized upon 
by many religious people as a refuge from all the 
disturbances of scientific investigation. Here, they 
have felt, we have a place to rest our religious con- 
victions which is inaccessible to all the currents of 
scientific thought and prying psychology. If there 
be a sublimal mind wholly inaccessible to all pry- 
ing psychologists, so deep down in the self that it 
cannot be investigated, and if there be higher spir- 
itual agencies, then perhaps in this deep unknown 
and unknowable region of ourselves we stand face 
to face with God, laved and embalmed by his con- 
stant and intimate presence. The only trouble 


314 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 


with this theory is that it reconciles science and 
religion as Herbert Spencer did with his Unknow- 
able and as Kant did with his region of the nou- 
menon. To be sure any assertion one cares to 
make about that region of the subliminal self can- 
not be refuted. Neither can it be proven. Any 
belief one wishes to cherish is beyond the reach of 
all experimentation. It cannot be put to the test 
of experience. It cannot be scientifically investi- 
gated because it lies outside the field of accessible 
experience. But of what use to religion is a belief 
that cannot be put to the test, that can be denied 
as readily as affirmed without any check in experi- 
ence to distinguish truth from error? James would 
say that there is one check. If one belief helps you, 
makes you happy, gives you courage and zeal and 
hope and power, and the opposite does none of 
these things, and if both these beliefs refer to a re- 
gion that is wholly beyond all experimental verifi- 
cation or investigation of any sort, then plainly one 
is a fool not to accept the helpful belief, especially 
when the stake at issue between the two beliefs may 
be a matter of life and death to the human race and 
success or failure in the life of the individual. 

But we claim that just as science has no use for 
experience which is wholly inaccessible to aware- 
ness, neither has religion. It is true that there are 
some who cultivate religion because it unleashes 
their phantasy; because it enables them to float 
away into a cuckoo-land of dreams unchecked by 
any hard, grim facts. Such persons cultivate relt- 
gion for the same reason that others read fantastic 


AND SCIENTIFIC METHOD 315 


fiction or take drugs or go on drunken sprees—it 
enables them to forget reality and comfort them- 
selves with the free play of phantasy. We do not 
for a moment deny that such religion prevails quite 
widely. But for that matter there are also ama- 
teur “‘scientists’’ who cultivate “‘science’ in the 
same way and for the same purpose; and there are 
dilettante farmers who cultivate farms, and so on 
throughout all the walks of life. The dilettante in 
religion is not peculiar to religion. We find him 
everywhere, always seeking some region where he 
can dream undisturbed by disagreeable facts and 
where his phantasy can rear its castles in the air. 
But it is just as false and unfair to take the religion 
of the dilettante as a true instance of religion as it 
is to take the science or the love or the farming of 
the dilettante as true instances of these several hu- 
man interests. 

Religion claims to deal with fact, with objects 
of immediate experience, just as much as science, 
just as much as engineering or farming or any 
other of the major concerns of human life by which 
men live. The earnest upholders and propagators 
of religion, in our time and in all time, have claimed 
to deal with that which shattered false dreams and 
thrust itself into human affairs with all the inevit- 
ableness and unyieldingness of ultimate fact. And 
if it could have been proven to these earnest up- 
holders and propagators that religion really did lie 
beyond the reach of experimental testing and im- 
mediate experience, they would have had nothing 
of it. They have been men and women who 


316 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 


craved exposure to fact and first-hand experience 
of that which is truly existent. 

But let us consider further what James says in 
that very significant statement which we last 
quoted. He says that ‘‘the ordinary sense material, 
inattentively taken in and subconsciously remem- 
bered and combined, will account for all his usual 
automatisms.’’ Here he notes a supremely import- 
ant distinction but does not seem to make further 
use of it. It is the distinction we have been insist- 
ing upon between the sense material, the datum, the 
experience of the not-self, and those automatisms 
or other responses of the self to such experience. 
We all know James well enough to be sure that he 
would not claim this “‘sense material inattentively 
taken in’’ to be created by. the self. It is given to 
the self from the outside. It is the most direct ac- 
cess which the self has to the external world. To 
experience this sense material is not to experience 
the subliminal self merely. 

But there is another thought, even more import- 
ant, in these words of James. He says that ‘““Wide- 
awake consciousness throws open our senses to the 
touch of things material,’’ but the subconscious, 
“the dreamy Subliminal,’’ may yield us access to 
the spiritual. Here James has touched the central 
issue. Here he has touched the sore spot that is 
causing all the trouble. Right here is the parting 
of the ways, one leading with false hopes into end- 
less confusion and recurring scepticism, the other, 
while more forbidding at the start, leading to the 
only certain knowledge there can be about things 


a 


AND SCIENTIFIC METHOD ahs 


spiritual. James suggests that ‘if there be higher 
spiritual agencies’ they cannot be found in the 
world of sense. Things material must exclude 
things spiritual; we must turn away from the ma- 
terial world, close all the senses that yield us 
knowledge of it, and find some hidden other sense 
which will give us knowledge of the spiritual 
world. Here is that pitiful blunder that always 
leads to confusion. Here he has put his feet to 
that path that leads out into the morass where 
nothing but dreams and will-o’-the-wisps can be 
found. Turn from the wide-awake consciousness 
of sense, which gives us knowledge of the material 
world, and turn to the consciousness of sleep, turn 
to dreams, to ‘“‘the Dreamy Subliminal’ and per- 
haps there we can find the spiritual. As sure as 
any one turns down that way, clear-headed think- 
ers sooner or later will show him to be following 
illusions, phantasies, and myths. James did not 
himself go that way. But with that broad sym- 
pathy and marvelous acquaintance with all the 
ways of the human heart, he recognized this to be 
the way so dear to many, and, in passing, acknowl- 
edged it to be a way which some might wish to fol- 
low; and he would not close the path to them. 
But we must insist that if the spiritual is to be 
found at all it must be found in and through the 
material. “The same senses that reveal the material 
must also reveal the spiritual. And in fact is that 
not very plainly the way in which we become cog- 
nizant of, say, other human minds which are spir- 
itual entities, if the word spiritual has any signifi- 


318 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 


cance at all. We do not mean to assert that the 
material is anything else than material. Neither 
do we mean that everything has both a material 
aspect and a spiritual aspect. There are material 
things which are wholly material and have nothing 
spiritual about them. In the same way we assert 
that oxygen is nothing but oxygen. It is not Oxy- 
gen in one aspect, and water in another. But oxy- 
gen, when combined with other elements, makes 
water. So also material elements may be organ- 
ized in such a way as to constitute the spiritual. 
And that does not make the spiritual dependent 
upon the material, but quite the contrary. When 
the material has been organized into a spiritual 
being, that being may be able to maintain itself. 
In fact, one unique character of mind, is that it 
resists disintegration with more energy and ability 
than does matter which has not been integrated into 
a mind. And what is most important, the whole 
material world, while not ceasing to be material, 
may in its totality, by reason of the form of this 
totality, constitute a mind. This problem of mat- 
ter, mind and God, we cannot here discuss at 
length.® 


But let us turn to another statement of James. 
With reference to his study of the mystic experi- 
ence ensuing from the use of certain drugs, he says: 


One conclusion was forced upon my mind at 
that time, and my impression of its truth has ever 
since remained unshaken. It is that our normal 


5 Whitehead, A. N., Science and the Modern World. 


AND SCIENTIFIC METHOD p1o 


waking consciousness, rational consciousness as we 
call it, is but one special type of consciousness; 
whilst all about it, parted from it by the filmiest 
screens, there lie potential forms of consciousness 
entirely different. We may go through life with- 
out suspecting their existence; but apply the requi- 
site stimulus, and at a touch they are there in all 
their completeness, definite types of mentality 
which probably somewhere have their field of 
application and adaptation. No account of the 
universe in its totality can be final which leaves 
these other forms of consciousness quite disre- 
garded. How to regard them is the question— 
for they are so discontinuous with ordinary con- 
sciousness. Yet they may determine attitudes 
though they cannot furnish formulas and open a 
region though they fail to give a map. At any 
rate, they forbid a premature closing of our ac- 
counts with reality. Looking back on my own 
experience, they all converge towards a kind of 
insight to which I cannot help ascribing some 
metaphysical significance. It is as if the opposites 
of the world, whose contradictoriness and conflict 
make all our difficulties and troubles, were melted 
into unity. Not only they, as contrasted species, 
belong to one and the same genus, but one of the 
species, the nobler and better one, is “itself the 
genus, and so soaks up and absorbs its opposite 
into itself.5 


How wonderfully close James here comes to 
what we believe to be the truth. That noble, gen- 
erous soul so eagerly seeking the truth, following 


5 op. cit. p, 388. 


320 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 


every clue with eyes wide open, comes so near the 
door. Just a step more and he would be inside. 
We are tempted to cry the quotation which he 
himself uses: “‘Oh, the little more, and how much 
it is; and the little less, and what worlds away.” 
And the wonderful thing is that he himself has 
given us the key to open the door which he could 
not enter. It is no honor to us that we can go 
where he could not. It is only because of him that 
we can enter in. “That key of radical empiricism 
which he found so late in life, too late to use him- 
self for the opening of many doors, he has given 
to us. j 

‘There are “‘other forms of consciousness,’ he 
says, which we ordinarily disregard, different from 
“our rational consciousness.’ That there are these 
other forms of consciousness there can be no doubt. 
The only question at issue is ‘“how to regard them 

. . they are so discontinuous with ordinary 
consciousness.’” Yes indeed, here is the question 
at issue. James could get nowhere with the prob- 
lem as long as he considered these “‘other forms of 
consciousness’ as discontinuous with our normal 
states of consciousness, They are not discontinu- 
ous. ‘They are directly continuous. 

The only difference between them and normal 
consciousness is that in them we become aware of a 
mass of merged data, so merged as to be a single 
unanalyzed and unsifted datum, while in ordinary 
consciousness we are aware only of a very few data 
which have been selected from out of this flood. 
Here is perfect continuity. And these ‘‘other forms 


a 


AND SCIENTIFIC METHOD a al 


of consciousness’’ are not different from the 
rational, if by that one means they are wholly irra- 
tional, or forms of consciousness to which ration- 
ality does not apply. If by rationality one means 
the analysis and selection of data to the end of dis- 
covering just what each datum or group of data 
signify, then these ‘‘other forms of consciousness’’ 
provide data which are just as much subject to in- 
terpretation as the data of any other form of con- 
sciousness. If by rational consciousness one means 
consciousness in which the data of awareness have 
been more or less completely and correctly inter- 
preted, then of course the mystic experience is not 
rational. ‘That is to say, it has not been interpreted 
but it is subject to interpretation. If by not- 
tational one means a form of consciousness which 
is not subject to rational interpretation, then these 
other forms are not not-rational. They are forms 
of consciousness in which we are aware of the same 
world in which we live constantly. They are 
simply states in which our awareness is more diffu- 
sive, less selective and analytic. 


CHARTER UAL 
RELIGION AND REFLECTIVE THINKING 


It will be impossible for religious thought to 
escape the influence of John Dewey’s latest, and 
perhaps greatest, work, the Paul Carus lectures 
published under the title of Experience and Nature. 
He makes very little explicit reference to religion 
but his ideas have important bearings upon religion. 
His thought is one of the noteworthy forces shap- 
ing modern life and anything so pervasive as reli- 
gion cannot escape its touch. “There are two ideas 
running through his recent work which we want 
to develop and use as searchlights to illumine the 
nature and function of religion. 

The first of these is his concept of meaningless 
experience. ‘The prevailing philosophic tradition 
has declared that all experience is meaning and 
without meaning there can be no experience. But 
Professor Dewey, makes a sharp distinction between 
meanings and mere events which occur in space- 
time, whether these appear in the consciousness of 
some individual or not. It is quite possible for 
experience to occur as a meaningless event. Mean- 
ing is the significance which some event or events 
may have. Significance is the pointing function, 
the signifying, which some events may possess. 

322 


AND SCIENTIFIC METHOD BW 45) 


But in so far as events may occur in one’s experi- 
ence without signifying anything to the individual, 
they are meaningless for him. Such experiential 
events do occur, he claims. 


We shall make use of this concept of meaningless 
experience to interpret mysticism. Mysticism is 
meaningless experience when the latter is believed 
to be an intimate association with God. Of course 
the natural rejoinder to such a remark is: But it 
ceases to be meaningless when it is viewed as asso- 
ciation with God or valued in any way. But we 
must distinguish between belie’s about an event, 
and the meaning which the event itse'f may have 
for the individual during his experience of it. If 
he does not think during the experience, the experi- 
ence is for him at the time meaningless. The mys- 
tic state is not a thinking state. Of course think- 
ing may occur in all degrees, but it 19>r0aches ex- 
tinction in mysticism and may d/s17>22¢ altogether. 

That mysticism is a state in which experience 
attains richest concrete fullness of content with 
minimum of meaning, is the view of it upheld by 
the two foremost expounders of mysticism in the 
United States, Professors Hocking and Leuba. 
That these two writers should differ so radically 
in their total evaluation of mysticism and yet 
should agree perfectly on this one fundamental 
issue, is striking confirmation of our thesis con- 
cerning its nature as meaningless ex perience. 


1 William Ernest Hocking, The Meaning of God in Human Experience, 
and more recently an article on “Principles and Methods in the Philosophy 
of Religion,” Revue de Metaphysique et de Morale, XXIX, 1922, 431-53, 
James H. Leuba, The Psychology of Religious Mysticism, particularly p. 313. 


32 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 


It will be our endeavor to show the value of 
this practice of mysticism which is worship and 
which involves casting off all our old meanings. 
Its value is (1) that it enables us at times to develop 
radically new meanings; or (2) to come back to 
the old meanings with new freshness and vigor; 
(3) to free ourselves for a time from the binding 
tension and constraint of established meanings im- 
posed upon us; (4) to quicken our sense of the 
concrete fullness of experience underlying our mean- 
ings by dipping into that stream of total event to 
which all our meanings must ultimately refer if 
they are to be efficacious in controlling the condi- 
tions of life. 

To demonstrate the value of this mystic mean- 
ingless experience we shall draw upon no other 
than Professor Dewey himself, although he is not 
ostensibly an expounder of mysticism. ‘There are 
many forms and motives in mysticism; and what 
Professor Dewey would condemn we also perhaps 
would condemn. But there is a form and use of 
mysticism which Professor Dewey may not con- 
demn and which, in any case, we are very sure is of 
the highest service in promoting the goods of life. 
This form and use of mysticism reveals, we believe, 
one of the high and indispensable functions of reli- 
gion. 

The second searchlight we want to borrow from 
Professor Dewey to illuminate the nature and value 
of religion is his concept of meaning. Meaning is 
the mental instrument by which we control experi- 
ence and magnify its value. Life mounts in value 


AND SCIENTIFIC METHOD D292 


and security just in so far as we bring into opera- 
tion the right meanings and use them rightly. The 
whole problem of human life, in a nutshell, is just 
this: How to magnify the values and security of 
life. This problem finds its solution in meaning 
providing meanings can be torn down, recon- 
structed and progressively elaborated by the radical 
method of mysticism. A set of radically new 
meanings can arise only when old meanings are dis- 
carded; and between this discarding of the old 
meanings and the rise of the new, there is an inter- 
vening state of consciousness which is relatively 
meaningless. This is the state of mysticism. This 
is the state of all profound worship. The bringing 
on of this creative and regenerative process is one of 
the supreme functions of religion. 


The order of our procedure shall be, first, to 
clarify the concept of meaningless experience; sec- 
ond, do the same for the concept of meaning; and, 
third, apply these concepts to the interpretation of 
mysticism. 


MEANINGLESS EXPERIENCE 


Ordinarily human experience is not meaningless. 
It may be questioned whether experience can ever 
attain consciousness without some rudiments or ves- 
tiges of meaning init. We believe it can, and that 
this occurs much more widely than is ordinarily 
thought; but whether or not that is granted, we 
hope to show that meaning can be reduced to a 
minimum without proportionate diminution of 
consciousness. 


326 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 


Undergoing some excruciating pain, where the 
mind is reduced to a blur of agony, is a case of 
meaningless content of experience. The flood of 
emotion that pours over one in response to music 
is a meaningless experience providing one does not 
attend to the music, think about it or discriminate 
its several qualities, but simply yields to the emo- 
tional state which some music is able to generate in 
some people under proper conditions. Basking 
stupidly in the sunshine is another instance. “The 
enjoyment of a warm bath providing one does not 
cognize the water nor anything else but simply 
submits himself to the voluptuous experience of 
that which is occurring then and there. Sensuous 
enjoyment of good tasting food without any recog- 
nition of what it is we are enjoying is a case in 
puint. That expansive, beaming state of well- 
being which some healthy human animals display 
when they come away from a meal, seems to be of 
this sort. 

Of course one can well insist that an adequate 
appreciation of music or food or any other object 
requires a finely developed system of judgments by 
which to discriminate and comprehend all the qual- 
ities that enter into it. With that we would thor- 
oughly agree. But we are not talking about what 
is or what is not adequate appreciation. We are 
simply trying to point to cases where concrete con- 
tent of experience occurs with little or no meaning. 

The difficulty of pointing out or calling to mind 
any case of meaningless experience is that such ex- 
periences leave no marks behind them. Only mean- 


AND SCIENTIFIC METHOD 327 


ings endure. Content without meaning passes like 
a baby’s breath. Qualities that merely occur, but 
are not discriminated and have no meaning for the 
person who experiences them, cannot be kept in 
mind. And they never recur; they pass beyond 
recall, spurlos versunken. It may be that the in- 
stances we have mentioned could be called to mind 
only because they contained some rudiment or ves- 
tige of meaning. But if we can trace content of 
experience to the point where meaning fades to the 
minimum, we have established all that is required 
of us. We can catch experience at those moments 
where all old meaning is just about to fade out 
ompletely, or where new meaning is just coming 
into existence. 

There are certain abnormal states of mind where 
consciousness can be very vivid and rich but with 
scarcely any meaning. Epilepsy may assume this 
form, and certain drugs produce this effect. Pro- 
fessor Leuba has made a very thorough and finely 
analytic study of many cases of this “‘mystic state.”’ 
He begins with the description of the effects of cer- 
tain drugs such as mescal, hashish, stramonium, 
alcohol, or of gases like ether and nitrous oxide. 
He notes how some savages have used these drugs 
to bring on that mystic state which was in their 
view a kind of divine possession. Then he notes 
other artificial methods of bringing on this mean- 
ingless content of consciousness by rhythmic move- 
ments carried to a frenzy of dancing, or again by 
long fasting or self-tortures, or a combination of 
these. By these methods primitive folk produce a 


328 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 


delirium of consciousness which is rich and vivid 
but meaningless. The Yoga system of mental con- 
centration is a much more refined method of pro- 
ducing the same result. Most of these generally 
end in the fading out of consciousness altogether, 
but prior to the elimination of consciousness there 
is a state where conscious content persists but mean- 
ing has disappeared. “The great Christian mystics, 
according to Professor Leuba, have simply carried 
the same practice to a much higher level of refine- 
ment and turned it to ethical ends but have not 
changed the essential nature of the experience. 

Before leaving this subject some explanation 
should be made of the fact that most moderns, and 
especially thinkers and philosophers, have so com- 
monly ignored this sort of experience, sometimes 
even denying that it ever occurs in the normal 
human being, and generally failing quite com- 
pletely to recognize the important function it has 
in the promotion of more abundant life. 

Certain philosophers in particular have been 
most insistent in claiming that all experience must 
be meaningful, that there is indeed nothing else in 
the universe except meaning. That thinkers should 
have this bias is easily understood. ‘They are pre- 
occupied with meanings to the exclusion of all else, 
precisely because they are thinkers. Add to this 
natural bias the weight of successive generations of 
thinkers who gradually shove their followers far- 
ther and farther into the realm of meaning to the 
ignoring of any other ingredient in experience. 
Finally the student of philosophy must perforce 


AND SCIENTIFIC METHOD B29 


immerse himself for years in the study of ponder- 
ous and technical works dealing altogether with 
abstract meanings which for the most part have no 
apparent reference to the immediate events of space- 
time. Considering all this it is no wonder philos- 
ophers have been so commonly prone to swallow 
up all experience in meaning. 

But the ordinary man is often subject to the 
same fallacy. We have already noted the difficulty 
of recalling or referring to any experience bereft 
of meaning. Meaningless experiences can be en- 
joyed, but only meaningless ones can be used. The 
ordinary man fixes his attention generally on that 
which he can use. A further prejudice against 
meaningless experience arises from the feeling that 
it is not befitting the dignity of homo sapiens to fall 
into that bovine stupidity where consciousness has 
no meaning. For the sake of our natural conceit 
and self-respect we will not admit that we ever 
yield ourselves up to that enjoyment of the eating 
situation where all discrimination and meaning 
fades out into meaningless satisfaction. I admit the 
premise that it is not nice to do this; but I do not 
admit the second premise that humans are always 
nice. It is not considered quite so disreputable to 
yield one’s self to the purely effecto-motor state of 
enjoying music in which floods of emotion without 
meaning pour over one. But even in such cases 
people are likely to claim that they contemplate 
some profound unwordable truth or have great 
insights revealed to them through the medium of 
music. That such experiences may provide the 


330 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 


way to new insights and great truths, we do not 
deny. We only assert at this point that such expe- 
riences may be, and often are, quite meaningless 
and shall further show that it is just this lack of 
meaning in them which makes it possible for them 
to serve, at times, as transitional stages toward the 
development of new meanings. 

To guard against another possible misunder- 
standing, we must point out that we are not assert- 
ing all music must be enjoyed without meaning. 
There may be no content of experience whatsoever 
which does not have its proper meaning if it were 
known. But what we do claim is that music and 
food and many other goods may be enjoyed by a 
human without grasping any meaning in the expe- 
rience; and that this is much more common than 
self-complacent mortals ordinarily admit. 


MEANING 


Meaning, otherwise called the concept or judg- 
ment, is the method by which we control the con- 
tent of experience. Meaning first arises through a 
relation that is established between some sound or 
other gesture, arid some event. The sound or ges- 
ture then becomes a symbol with a meaning. The 
meaning is not related to the event. On the con- 
trary the meaning is the relation of the gesture to 
the event. We do not first have meanings that 
must later be related, as Bradley would have us be- 
lieve. The hopeless difficulties into which we fall 
when we follow his lead in that direction is a piti- 
ful spectacle of what trouble philosophy may cause 


AND SCIENTIFIC METHOD Ba 


itself. This error of trying to relate meanings to 
events or to other meanings, as though the meaning 
was something else than precisely that relationship 
itself, could never have arisen had not meanings 
become divorced from events after the fashion we 
shall shortly describe. But, as we have said, when 
a sound or gesture becomes so related to an event 
as to mean that event, it becomes a symbol and its 
meaning or significance is precisely that relation to 
that event. 

But meanings point in two directions, toward 
events and toward other meanings. When a ges- 
ture such as sound, or movement, or mark, enters 
into that relation to some other event by virtue of 
which it has meaning, and some other gesture like- 
Wise acquires meaning in the same way, these two 
meanings may enter into a meaningful relation to 
one another. Thus a meaning may mean not only 
an event but also another meaning. In fact, these 
two lines of development proceed side by side. As 
a gesture refers to an event so also it refers to other 
meaningful gestures. And its meaning with respect 
to the event can become clear and definite only as 
it comes to involve other meanings. In other 
words, it requires a whole system of meanings ade- 
quately to define an event. Meaning becomes more 
meaningful just in so far as it specifies more accu- 
rately and completely some event or class of events. 
but this it can do only as it becomes elaborated into 
other meanings. A meaning is like a vulture 
which, as soon as it begins to hover about an object 
draws other vultures to it. 


BBY, RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 


But right here a most amazing twist of affairs 
often enters in. This relay race of one meaning 
passing over into another and the other into still 
another and so on, may become so interesting that 
thinkers become absorbed in it to the exclusion of 
all events whatsoever save those meager symbolic 
sounds and marks which serve as vehicles of mean- 
ing. This is that divorce between meanings and 
events to which we referred above. Not only are 
professional thinkers often caught in this whirl of 
abstract meanings because of their love for mental 
gymnastics, but ordinary men also may find their 
well-worn meanings so sufficient for their imme- 
diate needs as to ignore to the utmost any events 
to which these meanings might refer. Thus we 
often get on the high stilts of meaning and never 
touch the ground of events. But the whole great 
manifold of events or, what is the same thing, the 
Total Event, is going on all the time just the same, 
whether we have any sense of it or not. And this 
manifold movement of time-space will sooner or 
later break down our little structure of meanings 
and destroy us and them if we do not constantly 
reconstruct and renew our meanings in such a way 
as to discriminate and correlate events. 


Professor Dewey? illustrates meaning by the sig- 
nificance of a policeman’s whistle at the street cor- 
ner of congested traffic. His whistle means, first 
of all, a certain specifiable behavior of the traffic. 
But these specifications for traffic may be consid- 
ered, and often are considered, quite apart from any 


2 toc. cit., p. 196. 


AND SCIENTIFIC METHOD 333 


particular instance of traffic behavior. Further- 
more, these specifications require and imply still 
other specifications and regulations. Ultimately 
they involve that whole system of specifications 
which make up the law and government of the 
country. ‘These specifications are not in themselves 
physical, nor are they necessarily mental. Of 
course they become mental when a thinker thinks 
them. But they are constituents of the total uni- 
verse even when no thinker happens to be thinking 
them. They are methods by which we control cer- 
tain instances of experience in so far as experience 
is involved in the social behavior of that group 
which is subject to these regulations. These speci- 
fications render meaningful any particular experi- 
ence that comes under their control. Any event 
which occurs to me means much or little accord- 
ing to the scope and fulness of the specifications 
which control it. 

Of course such specifications or meanings may 
be of an entirely different order from that of the 
policeman’s whistle. They may be the specifica- 
tions of pure mathematics. The whole science of 
mathematics is such a system of specifications, some 
of which apply to actual events and some of which 
seem to have no reference to any possible events 
whatsoever. 

Now these specifications, whether of mathematics 
or of the governmental system, may become mat- 
ters of such absorbing interest to the mathemati- 
cian or the jurist that they lose sight of all events 
to which the mathematical or legal system Origi- 


ao4 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 


nally referred. Not only so, but the man who is 
neither mathematician nor jurist, who is not a 
thinker at all, but a stupid routineer, may blindly 
conform to the specifications of some mathematical 
or legal system without regard for any events to 
which they are applicable. The practical evils that 
result are matters of common knowledge. The 
‘‘legal mind” has become a by-word. ‘The mathe- 
matical theorist whose formulas are flawless but 
will ‘‘not work” is well known. But the so-called 
practical evils are not the only ones, nor are they 
necessarily the most important. [his process by 
which meaning becomes divorced from events is 
one in which meaning commits suicide and all the 
spiritual values of meaning slowly die out. But 
before we discuss this matter let us approach the 
matter of meaning from another angle. 

Meaning is the method by which we control ex- 
perience. Now we control experience by means of 
movements. Hence the first thing meaning must 
do, if it is to serve effectively in controlling experi- 
ence, is to specify the motions that enter into the 
experience, 1.e., the space-time relations. The 
events of experience are in space-time, hence the 
meaning that controls them must indicate accu- 
rately these space-time relations. Hence scientific 
analysis of experience reduces very largely to such 
a system of relations. The meaning of color, for 
physics, is a system of vibrations, which are space- 
time relations. Sound, heat, hardness, weight 
fluidity, are reduced by physics to space-time rela- 
tions. The difference between gold and silver, 


AND SCIENTIFIC METHOD 335 


between helium and uranium, are, in terms of 
physics, due to difference in space-time relations. 
Meaning, then, is largely reducible to these because 
content of experience can be controlled only in 
such terms. 

But there is something more than this in our 
meanings which are our system of judgments. In 
order to control experience we must be able to dis- 
criminate the different qualities that enter into it as 
well as trace the space-time relations in which they 
occur. In order thus to discriminate we must be 
able to point out one element of a total situation 
and distinguish it from the others. Thus judg- 
ment or meaning must consist of a very elaborate 
and delicate system of pointers. The word yellow, 
for instance, is a pointer by which we distinguish 
certain occurrences in our experience from other 
occurrences. No two such occurrences are ever the 
same; but they are all of such a nature that they 
can be grouped together and so designated all to- 
gether or singly as yellow. The reason why they 
can be grouped together in this way is because the 
pointer called yellow, when put into operation, 
is so designed as to fall upon these particular occur- 
rences and no others. 

Of course the word yellow, taken merely as a 
word, is not a pointer. There must be a system of 
judgments back of it to give point to it. It could 
be compared to the apex of a pyramid. The ex- 
treme apex of a pyramid, when separated from the 
pyramid, is not a point at all. It is a mere speck 
floating about and indicating nothing. The pyra- 


336 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 


mid or judgments back of the word are what give 
indicative value to it. 

But pointers of such a nature must be constructed 
and operated according to certain rules. Other- 
wise they will not point. These rules for the con- 
struction and operation of pointers constitute what 
we call logic in the strict and narrow sense. Incon- 
sistency in the system of judgments, for instance, 
destroys the indicative value of the pointer. You 
do not know what it points to because it seems to 
point to two or more wholly different things; or 
else it points to nothing at all because the judg- 
ments do not constitute a system at all. The pyra- 
mid is broken up into fragments with no apex or 
with many different apexes. 

Now we have noted how much a system of 
judgments, constituting a pointer or system of 
pointers, may engage our care and attention to such 
a degree that we lose sight of that content of expe- 
rience to which the system points. Mathematics 
may evolve a system of meanings which have no 
reference to any content of experience beyond 
themselves, but are cultivated for the aesthetic en- 
joyment of the ‘system itself. Of course it is an 
excellent thing to have on hand such elaborate sys- 
tems of meanings in case they may be found to be 
applicable to the control of events at some future 
time, even though they seem wholly inapplicable 
at the present time. Such development of useless 
meanings that have later been found useful, is an 
old story in science. We are only pointing to the 
way in which a system of meanings may, and par- 


AND SCIENTIFIC METHOD i bo i 


ticularly in philosophy frequently do, become con- 
tent of aesthetic enjoyment pure and simple and 
cease to function, as meanings properly should, to 
control the rest of life. When meanings do this, 
they cease to be meanings in the fullest sense; they 
become content rather than meaning. That mean- 
ing should cease to be meaning may seem to be par- 
adoxical. But if we follow closely our definitions 
I think the paradox disappears. Meaning is that 
which refers, on the one hand, to certain events, 
and on the other, to other meanings. When it fails 
to do either of these it becomes crippled as mean- 
ing; it becomes incomplete as meaning. When it 
ceases to have this dual reference, it loses some of 
the values of meaning. 

When meanings turn back upon themselves and 
become a closed system referring to nothing on be- 
yond themselves we have what Plato and Aristotle 
seemed to think was the noblest, the most real, 
phase of the universe. Many think this false esti- 
mate was the greatest weakness of Greek thought. 
Certainly the inheritance of this bias down through 
all ages of thought since then has been a great incu- 
bus. According to Aristotle, God spent all his 
blissful time engaged in such purely aesthetic and 
meaningless operations of the mind—meaningless 
in the sense that the judgments indicated nothing 
in the field of events that occur in space-time and 
had no application there, hence could not be used 
to control experience or magnify and secure the 
common goods of living. Such view of truth as 
a closed system of concepts referring to nothing 


338 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 


beyond itself is probably the reason the Greeks 
could so easily identify truth and beauty, for such 
a system is certainly an aesthetic object. 

There has been a great deal of philosophic 
thinking that has come to such an impasse. It has 
lost all bearing on events of space-time. Philoso- 
phers who develop such systems naturally are prone 
to deny any distinction between content of experi- 
ence and meaning. 

‘There are, then, two ways in which content of 
experience may become meaningless. One is that 
events of experience should occur prior to the devel- 
opment of any relevant system of judgments. The 
other way in which content of experience may be- 
come meaningless is through the development of 
a closed system of judgments of such nature that 
they do not control or point to anything beyond 
themselves. Such a system has no meaning or sig- 
nificance because significance is the function of 
pointing or signifying and such a system does not 
do this, except as between its own constituent mem- 
bers. Of course systems of judgment are rarely 
closed. Even when they are developed in such a 
way as to lose their function of signifying and con- 
trolling events, they may still point on to further 
meanings. Such a system is not altogether mean- 
ingless, but it has lost that original function of 
meaning which consists in controlling events. It 
is neither true nor false so far as events are con- 
cerned, because it does not apply to these. It has 
lost at least a part of its capacity to render life more 
abundant. 


| 
. 
: 


AND SCIENTIFIC METHOD 339 


It is plain that a great transformation occurs in 
life, and in the universe with which life deals, as 
soon as meaning begins to engage attention and de- 
termine conduct, providing meaning maintains its 
dual reference to events and to other meanings. 
When meaning of this sort flings its rainbow over 
the earth, spiritual life begins. It is through the de- 
velopment of symbolized meaning that science, art, 
and morality can come into existence. It is through 
such meaning that sex becomes love, the biological 
adjustments of maternal care become affection, the 
herd becomes the state, signaling becomes discus- 
sion, food-getting becomes industrial organization, 
etc. It is through such meaning that states of con- 
sciousness can become indicative of a wide complex 
system of behavior and experience which far tran- 
scend the time and place of their occurrence. 

The deepest drive of human life is to render it- 
self more abundant. To become more abundant 
means to have access to wider ranges of experience 
for use and enjoyment. “The one supreme and in- 
dispensable means to this increase of life is meaning. 
But meaning may fail, and so life may fail, in either 
of two ways, apart from the failure due to false 
meaning. Meaning may fail to promote life 
through the loss of all meaning whatsoever, or it 
may fail by the development of meanings that no 
longer apply to the events of space-time. In the 
one case meaning dies, leaving event a widow; in 
the other case meaning becomes divorced, leaving 
event a divorcee. ‘The one is the evil of hyper- 
sensuality; the other the evil of hyper-rationality, 


340 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 


Of these two dangers to which life is constantly 
subject, one the occurrence of events which have 
lost their meaning or never acquired any, the other 
the operation of meanings divorced from events, 
we believe the latter is by all odds the greater at 
our present stage of civilization. Of course the 
two evils often go together. But as civilization 
develops and becomes more complex this danger 
seems always to increase. The complexities of 
meaning which control our lives become so great, 
and absorb so much of our attention, that we are 
in danger of ignoring the concrete vivid fulness of 
qualities that occur in experience. One result of 
this is that when these qualities of space-time 
change beyond a certain limit, as they always are 
changing, we will fail to note that our system of 
meanings no longer applies and hence no longer 
serves adequately to control and direct our lives. 
Outworn laws, obsolete institutions and methods, 
are constant reminders of this danger. When mal- 
adjustment goes too far, disaster ensues. But even 
when this disaster does not occur, when the mean- 
ings serve very well to keep us safe in the midst of 
a tumultuous and dangerous universe, still our lives 
are pitifully impoverished if they become wholly 
subject to meanings which do not illuminate for us 
the qualities of space-time that occur in our experi- 
ence. When the meanings which regulate our lives 
do not make us more vividly and widely aware of 
hands and smiles and glancing eyes and wind and 
cloud and dust and flower, our meanings are not 
properly functioning. 


AND SCIENTIFIC METHOD 34) 


One of the great values of mysticism, as we shall 
see, is that it enables us to escape from such a hard 
outer shell of meaning. “The mystic experience is 
a meaningless, conscious event. In mysticism we 
discard all our old meanings and consciously sub- 
merge ourselves in the total event of experience. 
Out of such an experience we may emerge in a men- 
tal state which develops new meanings or modifies 
and reinterprets the old meanings and readapts 
them to the events of space-time. ‘This brings us 
immediately to the subject of mysticism. 


MYSTICISM 


We have hinted that mysticism and radical orig- 
inality may be closely allied. Mysticism does not 
necessarily lead to originality, any more than eating 
food necessarily leads to renewed strength and en- 
ergy. Often just the contrary occurs; the mystic 
may of all people be least original. But the mystic 
experience is one which makes originality possible. 
Here again we get help from Professor Dewey. 

Professor Dewey notes two kinds of originality. 
One consists in organizing and reorganizing estab- 
lished meanings in such a way as to bring forth 
new meanings. But the other is far more difficult, 
more rare, and far more fruitful in its possibilities 
of enriching the meaning of life. This other 
method is that of initiating new methods of view- 
ing and dealing with the raw materials of experi- 
ence. The first type of originality consisted in 
building on to the old meanings. The second type 
consists in going behind the old meanings and con- 


342 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 


structing new meanings with respect to the event 
of immediate experience. In this latter type the 
old meanings are resolved into something different, 
not merely carried on to their further implications. 

Following is the way Dewey himself states the 
contrast: 


There is a difference in kind between the 
thought which manipulates received objects and 
essences to derive new ones from their relations 
and implications, and the thought which gener- 
ates a new method of observing and classifying 
them. It is like the difference between readjusting 
the parts of a wagon to make it more efficient, and 
the invention of the steam locomotive. One is 
formal and additive; the other is qualitative and 
transformative.® 


Then he goes on to describe the mental state in 
which this radical sort of originality occurs: 


When an old essence or meaning is in process of 
dissolution and a new one has not taken shape 
even as a hypothetical scheme, the intervening ex- 
istence is too fluid and formless for publication 
even to one’s self. Its very existence is ceaseless 
transformaticn. Limits from which, and to 
which, are objective, generic, stateable; not so that 
which occurs between these limits. This process 
of flux and ineffability is intrinsic to any thought 
which is subjective and private. It marks ‘“‘con- 
sciousness’’ as bare event.‘ 


Now this “‘consciousness as bare event” is pre- 
cisely that form assumed by immediate experience 


8 Joc. cit, p. 222. 
4 loc. ctt., p. 221, 


AND SCIENTIFIC METHOD B43 


when there is no meaning in it, or when meaning 
is at the minimum. It is experience caught in that 
intervening period when old meanings have faded 
out and new meanings have not been born. It is 
experience prior to the discovery of meaning. It 
is experience which we feel but do not think, al- 
though in the case mentioned one is struggling to 
think. But he is struggling to think in some new 
way, not in the old way. When one goes directly 
to consciousness as bare event and struggles to de- 
velop meaning out of it, one has the experience 
described by Professor Dewey. 

Now this experience, we claim, is identical with 
religious mysticism at its best. It reveals, further- 
more, the vital indispensable function in human 
living which religion has to play. It is the regen- 
erative, recreative function. This experience which 
Dewey describes, which manifestly is an experience 
he himself has undergone, for his originality is of 
this radical sort, this experience which is conscious- 
ness as-bare event struggling with unborn meanings, 
this is the mystical experience par excellence. The 
mystic at his best is the midwife struggling with 
immediate experience to bring new meanings to 
birth. 

It is true that this state of consciousness as bare 
event may be, and often has been, cultivated by the 
mystics for its own sake and not for the sake of the 
unborn meanings in it. They have luxuriated in 
the experience without any attempt to bring forth 
new meanings. But this misuse of mysticism does 
not militate against the proper use and value of it 


344 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 


any more than the misuse of gustatory experience 
condemns eating. 

This state of consciousness described by Profes- 
sor Dewey is by no means to be identified with that 
of the lower animals or the primitive savage, even 
though it be an experience bereft of meanings. We 
have no reason to think that the consciousness of 
animal and savage consists of any awareness of such 
depth and fullness of immediate data as enters into 
the “‘fluid and formless’ flux of the radically origi- 
nal thinker during that intervening period after the 
old meanings have faded out and before the new 
meanings have emerged. On the contrary we have 
every reason to think that the primitive and the 
animal have the most impoverished content of con- 
sciousness. Experience can enter consciousness 
with any large fullness only as it is illumined by 
meanings. But meanings, when they attain any 
high degree of systematic completion and fixity, do 
not illuminate, but rather veil, the data of imme- 
diate experience. It is when meanings are being 
born or undergoing reconstruction that they 
quicken to the maximum the consciousness of con- 
crete experience. In that “‘process of dissolution’’ 
described by Professor Dewey, it is the old mean- 
ings just fading out, and the new meanings just 
being born, that make consciousness so rich and 
fluid in content. It is because experience, while 
bereft of any developed meaning, is pregnant with 
meaning, that its depth and richness can engage 
attention. This plainly is not the experience of 
the lower animals and the primitive savage. 


AND SCIENTIFIC METHOD 345 


It is the saving function of religion in human 
life to foster this mystic consciousness which is a 
condition of radical originality. Worship at its 
best is precisely this. It is the great regenerator, 
renewer, and reconstructor of human life because 
it fosters that experience which provides for the 
extreme reconstruction of meanings. It revitalizes 
old meanings with new insight, brings on ‘‘conver- 
sion,’ and once in a while it lifts human history 
bodily into new channels, as shown in those periods 
when great religions have been born. 

At the greatest turning points in history we find 
a mystic. Whether Jesus or Paul or both be con- 
sidered founders of Christianity, we have in Chris- 
tianity one of the most tremendous original histor- 
ical achievements of history issuing forth from the 
mystic. Of course all the ingredients that enter 
into Christianity may be traced back to earlier 
sources. ‘That is true of every historical phenome- 
non. But in the sense that any historic achieve- 
ment was ever original, Christianity was. So also 
with other turning points in history. Buddha, 
Mahomet, St. Francis of Assisi, each broke into 
long stretches of uniform history with a trans- 
forming originality. 

Of course many a man may have access to this 
experience of the mystic and not have the construc- 
tive intellectual powers to develop new meanings 
except in a very vague and rather futile way. But 
even these vague and inchoate meanings have some 
suggestive value. And when a keen intellect is 
also somewhat of a mystic, we have the source of 


346 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 


the most valuable kind of originality, such as 
Dewey himself exemplifies. 

That mysticism should issue in radical original- 
ity has its ready psychological explanation. In the 
mystic experience one becomes freed of all his old 
established meanings; he is lifted out of the ruts 
of all his ordinary thinking; he is shaken loose 
from all his mental habits; his mental system is 
melted down into a fluid state; he becomes filled 
with a throng of free, uncontrolled impulses so nu- 
merous and diverse that they hold one another in 
abeyance, producing a quivering mass of sensitivity 
to the total undiscriminated situation. When his 
mind recrystallizes out of this state it is quite likely 
to assume a different form from what it had before 
the experience occurred. The reflective thinker 
approximates this mystic deliquescence of meanings 
in his endeavor to deliver himself from all bias of 
prejudice and habit and give free play to every im- 
pulse in order to view the problem from every 
angle. However the two may differ in the motives 
that lead them to this state of mental deliquescence, 
the thinker and the mystic at this extreme point do 
truly enter into the same general type of experience. 

And what is more, they do not always differ so 
greatly in motive. ‘There are all sorts of mystics, 
but the best of them, and most of them in their 
best periods, have entered the mystic state not 
merely to luxuriate in the deliverance from all con- 
straint of habit, and the free play of impulse, and 
the social esteem which came to them because of the 
supposed divine visitation involved in this experi- 


AND SCIENTIFIC METHOD 347 


ence, and other such considerations, but they en- 
tered it in their struggle to solve problems. They 
have almost all been individuals who were strug- 
gling with the most serious difficulties of adjust- 
ment and undergoing most severe conflict of im- 
pulses. It was their effort to find a more satisfac- 
tory way of life and so solve the ultimate problem 
of all human living that gave rise to this state. 
They were searching to find the solution of a prob- 
lem and the greatest of them, as well as many who 
have attained no fame, ultimately found the object 
of their search, namely, a unified, harmonious and 
effective way of living. 

The mystic considers his experience to be a form 
of worship and communion with God. This also 
is not so remote from the reflective thinker as some 
would believe. The reason it seems so remote to 
many is because the kind of reflective thinking we 
are here considering, which leads to an experience 
approximating that of the mystic, is so very rare. 
Most thinking is not original, and of that which is 
original by far the greater portion of it is of that 
first type of originality mentioned by Dewey—the 
further elaboration of old meanings rather than the 
introduction of a new method and outlook. Most 
thinking is but clever manipulation of old mean- 
ings, defense of established positions, or deduction 
of implications. But the kind of original thinking 
which leads to the “‘mystic’’ experience is one in 
which the thinker struggles to divest himself of 
every bias and limitation imposed upon him by his 
mental habits and established meanings. He strug- 


348 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 


gles to get away from himself, understanding by 
self his established system of meanings. This strug- 
gle to escape from self with all its limitations and 
prejudices, this profound effort to open one’s mind 
to the total fact, is very closely akin to worship. 
It is somewhat of the same motive, the same earn- 
estness and profundity, the same method, as the 
worship of the mystic. 

Yet one cannot think without a system of mean- 
ings. How can one escape from the only system 
he has and at the same time have a system for the 
purpose of thinking? Only by disrupting his 
established system into a wide free play of impulse 
and allowing it to recrystallize. “This is what the 
thinker does and this is what we have seen the 
mystic does. Yet the thinker does not lose alli 
meaning and direction in his experience and neither 
does the mystic. He enters the experience with a 
purpose—to get a more adequate system of mean- 
ings—and this purpose gives direction to the whole 
process. One difference between the thinker and 
the mystic is the degree of control that still persists 
throughout the experience, it being presumably 
greater in case of the thinker than in case of the 
mystic. And yet here also the difference is too 
commonly magnified. As Dewey insists, the 
thinker cannot forecast the outcome. He must be 
ready to relinquish every precious object of desire, 
every good that has been cherished, for out of the 
process of radical originality may come that which 
is strange and unloved heretofore while all that 
was dear is cast away. 


AND SCIENTIFIC METHOD 349 


Of course the chief difference between the mystic 
and the thinker arises from the difference in their 
beliefs about the nature of the experience they un- 
dergo. But here also there are cases where they 
approach one another. Let us see if there is any 
sense at all in which the mystic and thinker can 
agree in the belief that the mystic experience yields 
a peculiar access to the divine. Here again we can 
turn to Professor Dewey for light. He shows us 
that note of worship and that recognition of a reli- 
gious object that appears in the thinker when he is 
sufficiently earnest and profound in his efforts. 


But a mind that has opened itself to experience 
and that has ripened through its discipline, knows 
its own littleness and impotencies; it knows that 
its wishes and acknowledgments are not final meas- 
ures of the universe whether in knowledge or in 
conduct, and hence are, in the end, transient. But 
it also knows that its juvenile assumption of power 
and achievement is not a dream to be wholly for- 
gotten. It implies a unity with the universe that 
is to be preserved. The belief, and the effort of 
thought and struggle which it inspires, are also 
the doing of the universe, and they in some way, 
however slight, carry the universe forward. A 
chastened sense of our importance, apprehension 
that it is not a yardstick by which to measure the 
whole, is consistent with the belief that we and 
our endeavors are significant not only for them- 
selves but in the whole. 

Fidelity to the nature to which we belong, as 
parts however weak, demands that we cherish our 
desires as ideals till we have converted them into 


350 


RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 


intelligence, revised them in terms of the ways and 
means which nature makes possible. When we 
have used our thought to its utmost and have 
thrown into the moving unbalanced balance of 
things our puny strength we know that though 
the universe slay us still we may trust, for our lot 
is one with whatever is good in existence. We 
know that such thought and effort is one condition 
of the coming into existence of the better. As far 
as we are concerned it is the only condition, for 
it alone is in our power. To ask more than this 
is childish; but to ask less is recreance no less ego- 
tistic, involving no less a cutting of ourselves from 
the universe than does the expectation that it meet 
and satisfy our every wish. ‘To ask in good faith 
as much as this from ourselves is to stir into motion 
every capacity of imagination, and to exact from 
action every skill and bravery. 


The striving of man for objects of imagination 
is a continuation of natural processes; it is some- 
thing man has learned from the world in which 
he occurs, not something which he arbitrarily in- 
jects into that world. When he adds perception 
and ideas to these endeavors, it is not after all he 
who adds; the addition is again the doing of 
nature and a further complication of its domain.°® 


This mergence of the individual with the total 
movement of all things, this sense of dependence 
upon the whole and participation in the working 
of this total movement, is surely a religious attitude. 
There is solemn hope and aspiration and dedicated 
endeavor and a sense of unity with All, which nev- 


5 pp. 420-22, 


a 


AND SCIENTIFIC METHOD 351 


ertheless is not pantheistic since the unique contri- 
bution of the individual is recognized and a certain 
independent responsibility and power on his part 
as “‘one condition of the coming into existence of 
the better.’’ 

Now whatever else God may be, he certainly 
cannot be separated from the total movement of 
all things, that total event with which all minor 
events are continuous. In the mystic experience 
we yield ourselves up to that event, we merge our- 
selves with it. To that event, or to the several 
events that enter into it, all our meanings must 
refer if they are to have any efficacy at all; and 
from that event or the several events which enter 
into it, all our meanings must be derived, accord- 
ing to the philosophy we are now considering. 

We become distinct individuals, efficacious in 
controlling events and contributory to the total 
outcome of things, only as we develop an opera- 
tive system of meanings. When we discard these 
meanings, as in the mystic state, we become merged 
with events. A system of meanings, and above all 
a growing system of meanings, is indispensable to 
individuality and all the values of individuality. 
We are not for a moment discounting these values. 
But from time to time we need to discard these 
meanings, merge with events and so with the Total 
Event, and thus get a new start. This is what wor- 
ship does. In its more extreme forms we call it 
mysticism, but in its rudimentary form it is present 
in all genuine cases of profound worship. Surely 
the mystic is justified in the substance of his belief, 


352 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 


whatever errors may be involved in his over-beliefs 
and however mistaken may have been some of his 
methods. 

On the other hand, this surrender to the mean- 
ingless flow of events may be cultivated in such a 
way as to undermine all meanings and cause life to 
sink to a state of brutishness. If the meaningless 
state is sought and cultivated as a permanent state 
and one strives by way of it to escape from all 
meanings continuously, it is dehumanizing. Such 
meaningless states, as we have seen, can be had in 
aesthetic experience or the sexual or gustatory or 
what not. All these experiences can be cultivated 
as stages and conditions to the development of a 
richer and more adequate system of meanings. 
But if they are cultivated for the sake of destroying 
all meaning from existence, they are the worst of 
evils. In other words, the meaningless state has a 
proper function in human living only as it serves 
to provide for the refreshing, reconstruction and 
magnifying of meanings; just as meanings have 
their proper place only as they serve to control, and 
give meaning to otherwise meaningless events. 
The two sides are reciprocal; each is indispensable 
to the best in the other. Thus work and worship 
should alternate. 


CHAPTER XIII 
THE EMERGENCE OF RELIGION 


Professor Hocking has said that the chief mark 
of religion is not utility but fertility. It is the 
mother of all the great cultural interests of human 
life. At one time all the arts, using arts in the 
broad sense to cover the several functions of cul- 
ture, have at some time or other resided in the body 
of religion. Politics in its more rudimentary stages 
was merged with religion and there was a time 
when men could not distinguish any political life 
in their society beyond the religious. Education, 
before it was sufficiently developed to be efficient, 
and while still blundering and crude, was identified 
with religion. Science, before it could be called 
science, before it had perfected its technique, while 
still vague, confused and ridden with wild illusions, 
but groping after the truth, was one phase of reli- 
gion. The same is true of art, of sex love, of agri- 
culture and industrial life, and so on down the list. 

This mergence with religion of all branches of 
culture when at the level of crude immaturity, has 
brought religion into disrepute. All the vagaries 
of that pre-scientific groping, with its superstitions, 
its myths, its blunders, is accredited to religion. In 
a sense it was religion, but it was religion mothering 

353 


354 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 


science. These blunderings, and gropings and 
superstitions were just as truly rudimentary science 
as they were religion. They arose because of man’s 
efforts to find the truth. We are not saying that 
all the myths, illusions, etc., arose out of efforts 
to seek the truth. We are only saying that that 
was one motive which has always to some degree, 
and however sporadically, actuated the doings and 
dreamings of men. And the working of this mo- 
tive, in so far as it did work, was rudimentary 
science or that out of which science developed. But 
until recent times it was so merged with religion 
as to be indistinguishable therefrom. ‘This grop- 
ing has been called science only since it has so de- 
fined its field and perfected its methods as to com- 
mand respect. In other words, the disreputable 
pre-scientific groping of men after truth has been 
identified with religion, while the highly respect- 
able and efficient stage of this groping is called 
science. Such has always been the fate of mother- 
hood—to be identified with the unlovely embryo 
and the mewling and squalling infant. What has 
been said of science is true also of art, industry, 
politics, etc. As soon as these interests became effi- 
cient, sufficiently mature to have a technique that 
would enable them to perform works that could 
command respect, they became distinguished and 
separate from religion. Thus religion becomes 
identified with the crude, the unlovely, the wild 
guesses and illusions of human beings. 

The contempt and doubt that has been cast 


AND SCIENTIFIC METHOD 355 


upon religion because of this her work of mother- 
hood, is reflected by William James. He says: 


The cultivator of this science [the history of 
religion] has to become acquainted with so many 
groveling and horrible superstitions that presump- 
tion easily arises in his mind that any belief that 
is religious probably is false. In the “prayerful 
communion of savages with such mumbo-jumbo 
deities as they acknowledge, it is hard for us to see 
what genuine spiritual work—even though it were 
work relative only to their dark savage obligations 
—can possibly be done. 

The consequence is that the conclusions of the 
science of religions are as likely to be adverse as 
they are to be favorable to the claim that the es- 
sence of religion is true. There is a notion in the 
air about us that religion is probably only an 
anachronism, a case of survival, an atavistic re- 
lapse into a mode of thought which humanity in 
its more enlightened examples has outgrown; and 
this notion our religious anthropologists at present 
do little to counteract. 


The worst of it is, however, that these various 
branches of culture to which religion gives birth 
are not delivered completely from the mother’s 
body as an individual organism would be. They 
are not, of course, individual organisms at all. 
They break up into various lines of development 
or non-development. Those lines that do not, 
that remain crude and archaic, are likely to remain 
in the body of religion indefinitely. Hence we 


1 Varieties of Religious Experience, p. 490. 


356 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 


often have a crude science or pre-science allied 
with religion, which may fight that science which 
has developed sufficiently to stand as an independ- 
ent and distinct branch of culture. 

But in all this we have the explanation for a 
very remarkable fact, which is the chief point we 
want to make. Religion, while being one of the 
oldest of all the interests of man, is one of the least 
differentiated and distinct. She has been con- 
stantly so merged with her progeny and with the 
discarded forms of arts which once she reared, that 
her own characteristic features and form are 
scarcely known. ‘This is shown by the great diffi- 
culty we have in trying to define the precise char- 
acter of religion. While all other interests, such 
as politics, industry, education, science, art, and sex 
love, have been growing out into clear and well- 
defined functions of culture, each recognized for 
what it is, each with an “‘essence’’ of its own, reli- 
gion remains still in the dark. It is confused with 
social service, with morality, with art, with the in- 
ertia of tradition, with the illusory play of fancy, 
with group life,as such, with philosophy, with 
science, and heaven knows what all. It is because 
religion in actual fact has not differentiated itself 
from the rudimentary forms of the several arts and 
sciences, now established or yet to be. She has 
been so preoccupied in mothering that she has ne- 
glected to develop her own unique individuality. 
Religion is still more or less in that mixed and 
amorphous condition in which all branches of cul- 
ture have stood in their rudimentary stages prior 


AND SCIENTIFIC METHOD Be 


to that differentiation and distinction of function 
which comes with maturity. 

It is, of course, well known that the develop- 
ment of human life means this growing distinction 
of character and function on the part of all cul- 
tural interests. Distinction of function does not 
mean separation, of course, or ought not to mean 
it and must not, if health is to be preserved. The 
functional relation means intimate interaction, mu- 
tual determination. “Two curved lines are func- 
tions of one another if the course of one determines 
the course of the other. The hand and eye are 
functions of one another if what the eye sees deter- 
mines what the hand shall touch and what the 
hand shall touch determines what the eye shall see. 
This growing differentiation at its best ought to 
bring about the greatest efficiency and truest free- 
dom and maximum achievement on the part of 
each interest, while at the same time preserving the 
closest correlation and interaction of each with all 
and all with each. This process of functional dif- 
ferentiation on the part of the arts and sciences is 
one of the marks of progress. 

Now the question arises: Will religion undergo 
this process of differentiation along with the other 
arts? She has been the slowest of all to stand 
forth in her unique individuality, for reasons 
already mentioned. But will she ever stand forth 
in such manner? Will she always remain, as she 
has been in the past, suffused throughout the cha- 
otic mass of undefined human interests, or will she 
unveil a distinct character and function of her 


358 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 


own, interacting with all the other interests of man 
but not confused with them? 

Perhaps before this question is answered, a prior 
question should be put. Does religion have a 
unique individuality of her own? Is she anything 
at all save only that mental attitude in which new 
culture germinates? Is she nothing at all but that 
confused state of mind and life in which are mixed 
together, on the one hand the mass of vague, grop- 
ing, undefined interests which have not yet devel- 
oped sufficiently to be distinctly recognized and de- 
liberately prosecuted, and on the other hand the 
cast-off and outgrown forms of arts and sciences 
which have long since passed beyond the ideas and 
attitudes which they left behind them in the body 
of religion? Is religion not a true ‘“‘mother,’”’ but 
only a mass of eggs, as it were, so that when all 
the progeny are born there is nothing left but 
shells and refuse and the spawn that failed to ma- 
ture? ‘This is the view that some hold, but it is 
emphatically not our own. 

But if religion has never yet merged in distinct 
character and function, how can we say that she 
has any? Our answer is that even now religion is 
in process of so emerging. ‘The thing is going on 
before our eyes in this age in which we live as it 
never did before. In the past, religion could serve 
human life adequately by remaining beneath the 
surface, moving mightily but indistinguishably 
allied with other interests; ambiguous, germinat- 
ing, indistinct. But that time is past and men are 
turning to religion with the demand that she un- 


AND SCIENTIFIC METHOD aay 


veil herself, show her features, reveal her unique 
identity or else confess that she has none. The 
world demands such a distinct and characteristic 
religion to-day because the various arts and sciences 
have attained such a degree of maturity that they 
need her, no more as a nursing mother whose iden- 
tity is merged with their own, but as a guide and 
companion, with a unique and inspiring individ- 
uality of her own, who can stir them to new zeal 
with her companionship, refresh and enlarge their 
vision and keep them perpetually young and 
growing because of the unfolding wealth of expe- 
rience which religion enables them to discern. 
What are the signs that religion is beginning to 
differentiate itself with a distinctness that it never 
had before? ‘There are many. Most striking is 
the intensive study of religion that is being made. 
Historical, psychological, sociological, and philo- 
sophical studies of religion have been prosecuted 
during the last fifty years to a degree that is un- 
paralleled. The persistent and strenuous efforts 
to define religion point to the same thing. In 
other days men were content to take their religion 
without attempt to define it. But not so now. 
Religion is becoming highly self-conscious, and 
self-consciousness is a mark of growing distinctness 
of individuality. The groping efforts of the 
church to find its own unique function in society 
points to the same thing. The separation of 
church and state, and church and education, the 
ever clearer line of demarcation that is being drawn 
between religion and morals, religion and science, © 


360 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 


religion and art, all tend to emphasize or force to 
the point of recognition, the distinctive character 
of religion. Religion as a distinct function is 
emerging. We know of no greater work to be 
done in the world today, and no greater need to 
be met, than just this of bringing religion forth 
into clarity and distinctness. For only as this dis- 
tinct and essential function of religion in human 
life is recognized and provided for, can religion 
play her rightful part in meeting the deepest needs 
of men. In the past, as we have seen, it was not 
necessary to clarify the character of religion in 
order to enable her to do her proper work. But 
today it is. 


Religion may be used in two senses, to designate 
its two different phases. Rudolf Eucken has made 
this distinction and it seems to us it has never been 
sufficiently recognized. He distinguishes the two 
by calling one Die universale Religion and the 
other Die charakteristische Religion. In one phase, 
religion is the mass of germinating culture consist- 
ing of embryonic arts in all stages of development 
mixed with the cast-off, outgrown forms of arts 
that have long since outgrown the body of reli- 
gion.” In the other phase religion is a character- 
istic function distinct from the other functions. 
This does not mean, of course, that religion in this 
latter sense does not pervade the whole of life, as 
religion always should. We have already ex- 
plained the use of the word function sufficiently to 


2 We here use the word culture in the broad sense to designate all that 
portion of the life of man that distinguishes him from the beast, in a word 
his spiritual life. 


AND SCIENTIFIC METHOD 361 


show that we do not mean by it something sepa- 
rate from the rest of life. 

The importance of this distinction will not ap- 
pear until we consider some of the studies that 
have been made of religion. We have already 
quoted from James to show the dubious and con- 
temptuous attitude that so easily arises toward reli- 
gion when its history and anthropology is studied. 
What these studies put before us is not character- 
istic religion, not religion in its unique character 
and distinct function, but it is simply germinating 
culture. In a certain sense it can be said that what 
they study is religion; but it is equally true to say 
that what they study is rudimentary culture, em- 
bryonic science, embryonic art, and _ politics. 
What one should condemn in these early stages of 
life is not religion as such, but the cultural inter- 
ests of man when at these rudimentary stages of 
development. It will help to free religion from 
this unjust treatment, and clarify the unique char- 
acter of religion, if we glance at some of these his- 
torical studies. “There is perhaps nothing better 
in this field than George Foote Moore’s The Birth 
and Growth of Religion. We shall take it as the 
best example we can find of such a study. 

He does not try to define religion but he does 
find it necessary to set up certain marks by which 
to recognize it when he finds it. These marks are 


four: 
(1) Man’s belief in certain powers that do 


things to him. 


362 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 


(2) Belief that these powers are actuated by 
motives similar to his own. 

(3) Belief that he can induce these powers to 
behave in such a way as to help him or refrain 
from hurting him. 

(4) Action according to these beliefs. 

By powers are meant simply “‘things that do 
things’ without any attempt to define their na- 
ture. Their nature will be defined variously in 
different religions. What makes these beliefs re- 
ligious, however, according to Mr. Moore, is not 
their character as beliefs, but the way they are 
acted upon. One must stake his welfare on his be- 
lief and act accordingly. Otherwise the belief is a 
philosophy, a fancy, a myth, or a science, but not 
a religion. 

His welfare that he commits to his religious be- 
liefs, the character of the beliefs themselves, and 
the way he acts upon his beliefs, are all determined 
by his wants. If he wants protection from wild 
beasts, from storms or cold or parching heat, he 
will construe the gods in such a way as to make 
them fit and able to provide such protection on 
condition that he himself acts in the proper way 
toward them. If he wants his herds to multiply, 
his god may be a bull. If he wants crops to grow 
and yield, his god may be a rain god or a river god. 

The impulse giving rise to religion, says Mr. 
Moore, is that of self-preservation, which includes 
preservation of the family, the tribe, the species, 
the land or whatever concerns and constitutes that 
system of interests which makes up the self. At 


: 


AND SCIENTIFIC METHOD 363 


first this impulse is chiefly concerned with the at- 
tainment of material goods and avoidance of ma- 
terial ills. But in the course of time it is ‘“‘self- 
realization,’’ the development of all the powers of 
the self, the attainment of a transcendent self, 
This self-realization becomes the governing inter- 
est and for it biological existence may be sacrificed. 
Without it all things else have no value. When 
this interest becomes paramount the God (or gods) 
become some sort of transcendent self (or selves) , 
an over-self, through whom this self-realization can 
be attained. 

The first step in the development of religion, 
traced by Mr. Moore, is the transition from deal- 
ing with things as powers in themselves to dealing 
with the soul or spirit back of these things. At 
first the back-switching branch, that lashes you in 
the face, or the lightning that frightens you, or the 
wandering stream which led you to your quarry, 
was itself a malevolent or benevolent thing with 
which you must deal directly. The branch itself, 
or the lightning or stream, you must control or 
pacify, or otherwise act to win its favor or escape 
its malice. But in the course of time it is not the 
branch itself or stream or lightning, but the spirit 
in the branch with which you must deal. 

This belief in souls arises from two sources; 
observation of the dying and dreams. 

The man who was energetically doing things, 
now lies cold and still, How came this chnge? 
It came when he ceased to breathe. It must be, 
then, the breath which has passed out of him 


364 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 


which wrought the change. His breath, then, was 
that which animated him, which did things in 
him. His self, that which does things, is the 
breath. Or again, it is when the blood flows out 
of him that he ceases to do things. It must be 
either the breath or the blood, or both, or some- 
times one and sometimes the other which is the 
doer of things. Thus soul or spirit is the word by 
which he designates the doer in the body, and is 
likely to be conceived as another more ethereal body 
made of breath. So it comes about that when the 
branch or stream does things which attract his at- 
tention he thinks it must be some spirit in the 
branch or stream which does it. 

Dreams further augment this process of filling 
the world with spirits akin to the “‘soul’’ of man, 
and making spirits rather than ordinary sensible 
things the chief objects of human concern. In his 
dreams he deals with men and animals and other 
objects. In dreams he wanders in regions remote 
from the place of his sleeping body. How is this 
possible unless he has a double, a soul, which can 
leave the body, wander to these distant parts, and 
interact with other objects. Also in dreams one 
sees men and beasts which come to where one is 
sleeping, which may converse and even struggle 
with one; and yet on awaking one may discover 
that these men and beasts in bodily form have 
never been present. Hence they also must have 
souls that leave the body and wander abroad. 

Thus there gradually develops the notion of 
spirits which animate objects whenever these ob- 


AND SCIENTIFIC METHOD 365 


jects do anything to attract especial attention. 
Hence it is upon these spirits that one’s welfare is 
dependent. If one would get food or escape harm, 
ward off danger or be grateful for good received, it 
is to these spirits that one must turn. It is they that 
support one on the floating ice, or bring the fish, 
or cause the log to span the stream. Whatever is 
done they do, for they are the doers. But that 
does not mean that early man generalizes and as- 
serts that all the objects in the universe embody 
spirits and all the happenings in the universe are 
done by spirits. He does not ordinarily generalize 
at all. He does not think about the universe as a 
whole. He thinks only of this particular hap- 
pening and that. These, on those particular occa- 
sions when they most conspicuously affect his in- 
terests, he believes to be animated by spirits. But 
what the universe as a whole may be, may never 
enter his head. 

Before pursuing the sketch further there are two 
points of criticism which we must raise. The first 
applies to the concept of religion here implied. 
On what grounds can one call all these beliefs, in- 
ferences, illusions and practices religious? Mr. 
Moore says that the belief and practice can be 
called religious if the individual commits his wel- 
fare to the belief and acts accordingly. But surely 
we have scientific beliefs to which we commit our 
welfare and act accordingly. We have ordinary, 
practical, everyday beliefs on which we constantly 
stake our welfare, and yet we do not recognize 
anything distinctively religious in them. No, we 


366 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 


must insist that these developing beliefs which Mr. 
Moore has so accurately sketched are no more rep- 
resentative of rudimentary religion than they are 
stages of rudimentary science, rudimentary art, 
rudimentary social life, rudimentary love, and 
rudimentary culture in general. The process by 
which men come to belief in spirits is a scientific 
and artistic process every bit as much as it is a reli- 
gious process. Of course if one insists that these 
products of imagination cannot be called scientific 
and artistic because the latter necessitate a special 
technique and distinctive function, then we can 
say the same with regard to religion. One can in- 
sist that these processes are not religious because 
they do not reveal that special function and tech- 
nique which we find in the religion of today. The 
blade cuts both ways. Either this process of devel- 
oping beliefs is rudimentary culture in that stage 
ptior to the differentiation and technical proficiency 
of the several arts and hence is just as much embry- 
onic science, art, and social life, as it is embryonic 
religion, or else it is none of these, neither religion 
nor science nor art. We admit that in all this there 
is certainly an element of religion just as there is an 
element of science and art and social life, etc. But 
we cannot identify it all with religion any more 
than with the others. 

The second point of criticism is with regard to 
the motive or impulse that gives rise to all these be- 
liefs and practices. Mr. Moore says it is the impulse 
of self-preservation. We feel that that is a very in- 
accurate statement. The lower animals are actu- 


AND SCIENTIFIC METHOD 367 


ated by the impulse of self-preservation, but they 
do not develop any such world view, or religion, if 
one wishes to call it religion. They experience the 
death of their associates and the higher animals have 
dreams. Why do they not develop beliefs in spirits 
and try to pacify, persuade, or control them? 
Plainly the impulse to self-preservation is no ex- 
planation at all. 

Why, then, does man go through this process of 
developing a rudimentary culture, one ingredient 
of which is religion? We cannot ask, Why does he 
develop a religion, for reasons already stated. He 
does not develop a religion as something distinct 
from rudimentary, germinating culture, in which 
there is mixed together as much science, art, social 
life, and love as there is religion. But why does 
he do it?) The answer to that question would lead 
us very deep into the nature of man and into the 
understanding of religion. Santayana would say 
that it is due to the lyric quality of human con- 
sciousness which spins out fancies for delight. 
John Dewey would say it is the exuberant remin- 
iscencing to which man is so prone. But we do not 
believe these answers go to the root of the matter. 

The child, the savage and the man in general de- 
velops a boundless efflorescence of beliefs, fancies, 
myths, and speculations because he is organically 
so constructed as to be responsive to a far greater 
number of stimuli than those which control his ad- 
aptation to immediate environment. Putting the 
same thing in other words, it is because man is en- 
dowed with a far greater number and diversity of - 


368 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 


impulses than can be fulfilled in ordinary adaptive 
behavior. It is these suppressed or inadequately ex- 
pressed impulses, responsive to the rich fullness of 
the world about him, that give rise to all these 
groping beliefs concerning this vague, dim, rich 
fullness of the world. Still another way of express- 
ing the same thing is to say that man is aware, prior 
to sophistication, of far greater wealth of immediate 
experience than he is able correctly to interpret or 
use in adapting himself to his recognized environ- 
ment. Because of these surplus stimuli, surplus im- 
pulses, and surplus wealth of experience, he is given 
to wondering, speculating, imagining, and groping 
out into the unknown, striving to solve the mys- 
tery of that total impact of the world upon him 
which so far exceeds those few features which serve 
to guide him in meeting the routine requirements 
of life. 

Now it is our claim that religion is precisely our 
response to the undefined significance of this total 
wealth of experience when we take it as a single 
datum signifying the supreme and total object with 
which we have to do in all the conduct of our lives. 
This is religion, we say, when religion becomes suf- 
ficiently differentiated from the several branches of 
culture to show its unique character and distinctive 
function. The several branches of culture, on the 
other hand, are distinguished from religion in that 
they select from this wealth of surplus experience 
certain features or data which they circumscribe as 
their own, and with which they deal by a special 
technique which is also their own. The several 


AND SCIENTIFIC METHOD 369 


sciences do this. The several fine arts do this. Ro- 
mantic love does this. Friendship does it. So also 
politics, etc., etc. Underneath, or running through, 
this wealth and surplusage of experience which pro- 
vides the materials for the several branches of 
culture and for religion, there are those common 
everyday features which guide us in our biological 
adaptation to the immediate environment. It is be- 
cause the lower animals scarcely attend to anything 
more than these common everyday features, that 
they do not develop a culture or a religion. 

We have just defined religion and the branches of 
culture as they are when they become differentiated 
and distinct in character and function. But in the 
early stages of life as portrayed by Mr. Moore, and 
even to a large degree in modern life, they are not 
differentiated. Differentiation is a matter of degree, 
and in primitive life it is at the minimum. Con- 
sequently at that time religion was not what we 
have just described it to be nor were the branches 
of culture. They were mixed together. That means 
that early man did not respond to the wealth and 
surplus of experience as a total datum signifying 
the supreme and total object with which he has to 
deal. Nor did he select from out this total wealth 
certain features which were allocated to certain spe- 
cial techniques. He selected certain features but not 
according to any special plan. He reacted to the 
surplusage of experience in a more or less merged 
and inchoate form, and yet not as a total datum 
signifying one supreme object. His position was a 
sort of compromise between the religious attitude 


370 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 


on the one hand and the attitude of the several arts 
and sciences on the other. 

There is a still third criticism we would make of 
Mr. Moore’s treatment, which supports the view 
we have just set forth. We believe Mr. Moore 
makes primitive man altogether too practical. He 
represents him as thinking, doing, and believing, 
always with a view to satisfying certain practical 
needs such as food and shelter. Both Santayana and 
John Dewey have shown this to be a fallacy.* Be- 
cause we are living in an age and in a country dom- 
inated by practical interests, especially economic, we 
are prone to think that all men of every age were 
so controlled. But children and primitive men are 
not preéminently practical. They are not chiefly 
concerned with matters of food and shelter. Early 
man by nature is a dreamer. He only gradully 
learns to work and think with a view to satisfying 
his material needs. He is not nearly so diligent in 
the pursuit of material goods as are the lower ani- 
mals or as are many men in civilized conditions. 
He must learn to work, to constrain his imagina- 
tion, to engage in directed thinking. And he can 
learn this only as he has painfully built up a system 
of tradition that holds him to such endeavors. The 
savage does not have such a system of tradition or- 
dinarily. To be sure he is often hard pressed. But 
he would rather play and dream and die than work, 
or bend his thought to practical matters. He is not 
nearly so much of an economic man as Mr. Moore 
and others would represent him to be. 


3 Dewey’s most effective treatment of the matter is in his Reconstruction 
of Philosophy. 


AND SCIENTIFIC METHOD 371 


Of course early man’s imaginings are shaped by 
his wants. But what are his wants? Food and 
shelter, yes. But these are only two among in- 
numerable others. And among his many wants, 
strongest of all in the case of some, is the want of 
venturing forth into the dim unknown that en- 
compasses him. ‘This he can do most readily and 
safely by exercising his imagination. So he com- 
mences to develop beliefs. These beliefs are relig- 
ious in so far as they pertain to the significance of 
the merged and total datum of experience prior to 
analysis and discrimination of distinct factors with- 
in it. For these several factors do not signify God, 
but only the total indiscriminated event can involve 
God. Some of his beliefs may approximate the 
status of being beliefs concerning this total event, 
for he has not learned to analyze and discriminate 
within it those factors which signify separate ob- 
jects. But neither has he learned to apprehend the 
total event as the single unanalyzed passage of na- 
ture. Hence he is neither thoroughly religious nor 
thoroughly scientific, and he is scarcely any more 
the one than the other. He neither discriminates 
the data accurately nor merges them completely 
into a total datum. He does not carefully investi- 
gate the significance of distinct data nor consider 
the significance of this total datum. Rather his 
mental attitude wavers back and forth between these 
two extremes. Hence he is neither scientific nor 
religious but a mixture of the two which may ulti- 
mately develop into both, but for the time is nei- 
ther. It is apparent, however, that these two lines 


372 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 


of development must move in opposite directions. 

Religion is just as ‘‘instinctive’’ as science and art, 
but no more so. The only reason the view has 
been held that religion is more “‘instinctive’ than 
politics and cultured love, is because religion has not 
been defined in thought as clearly as these latter. 
All the crude inchoate stage of culture has been 
lumped together as religion. Of course when that 
is done religion appears to be more primitive and 
closer to original human nature than the several 
arts and sciences. We have tried to show how this 
misunderstanding so easily arises. 

As a matter of fact one must learn to worship, to 
be thoroughly and consistently religious, just as 
much as he must learn to love. The sex impulse 
does not need to be learned, but love does. Gregar- 
iousness does not need to be learned, but political 
life does. An imaginative reaction to a back-slash- 
ing branch does not require a very great amount of 
learning, but to enter into the distinctive religious 
experience does. ‘To be thoroughly and consis- 
tently religious requires a gradually and painfully 
acquired system of proper traditions, and the same 
is true for thoroughness and consistency in scientific 
method or artistic production. 

Religion as something unique and distinct, we 
have said, is our response to some significance of 
the total datum of experience, or, what Whitehead 
calls the total undiscriminated event which may en- 
ter awareness under favorable conditions. But to 
be religious in this way requires two things which 


4 Whitehead, A. N., Concept of Nature, 


AND SCIENTIFIC METHOD Vis, 


are interdependent. One must somehow become 
aware of this total event and, secondly, he must find 
some significance in it. He can scarcely become 
aware of it unless he does apprehend it as signif- 
icant, however undefined the significance may be. 
To find significance in this total event means to have 
certain beliefs concerning it. Such beliefs are truly 
religious. But they can arise, it is quite plain, only 
as the result of long development. “They can ap- 
pear only in ‘‘the fullness of time.” <A fully de- 
veloped and differentiated religion may be said to 
consist of two parts: (1) the technique, ceremonies, 
etc., by which one enters into an awareness of this 
total event in which we “‘live and move and have 
our being’; and (2) beliefs concerning this total 
event. It is plain that the primitive man cannot 
have religion in this sense, but he can have the be- 
ginnings of such a religion, just as he can have the 
beginnings of science and political life. 

To find religion in its clearest and best defined 
form, we must go to its highest development, rather 
than its lowest. Only there does it begin to become 
differentiated from foreign admixtures. Nothing 
better has been said upon this, we believe, than the 
words of Rudolf Eucken, which we must quote: 


Wer den Wahrheitsgehalt der Religion Ergrun- 
den méchte, der braucht weder ihre verschwinden 
zeitlichen Anfange aufzuspuren, noch ihr lang- 
sames Aufsteigen zu verfolgen, er darf sich so fort 
auf ihre Hohe versetzen. Denn erst hier erlangt 
das Wahrheitsproblem volle Klarheit and zug- 
leich eine zwingende Kraft. So Kummert uns 


Oa RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 


nicht das Zauberwesen, das die anfangsstufe der 
Religion begleitet and beherrscht, so braucht uns 
auch nicht die Religion als ein bloss Stuck enier 
Volkskultur and als Naturmmthologie zu _ be- 
schaftigen. Sondern unser Problem beginnt erst 
da, wo sie eine eigene Welt erzeugt, diese allem 
ubrigen Leben entgegenhalt and es von ihr aus 
umegestalten will, umgestalten dadurch, dass sie 
den Menschen inmitten seines eigeneen Kreises 
eine unsichtbare Ordnung, ein ewiges Sein, ein 
ubernaturaliches Leben vorhalt, and dafur seine 
Seele erlangt.® 


Let us follow further the excellent sketch of Mr. 
Moore’s, not with the hope of finding the distinct 
form of religion in these historic stages but in order 
to show that religion is throughout in process of 
emergence, that it is indistinguishably mixed with 
other interests, moving mightily beneath the sur- 
face of life, hidden by the flux of many things. 


Magic and religion cannot be set over against one 
another, says Mr. Moore, for they merge. How- 
ever, religion in a higher and purer form may be 
contrasted with magic. Magic is that practice which 
is designed to coerce the spirits, while this higher 
stage of religion persuades and promotes fellowship 
with the spirits. But he adds: “Many rites even in 
the higher religions are survivals—sometimes sym- 
bolized—of magical performances; and what is of 
greater moment, acts which in their origin were, by 
our definition, purely religious, often come to be 
regarded as so infallibly effective that the element 


5 Der Wakrheitsgehalt der Religion, p. 1. 


AND SCIENTIFIC METHOD ails, 


of persuasion recedes and the rite duly performed 
is believed, at least by the vulgar, of itself to accom- 
plish the desired result—that is to say it lapses into 
what we have defined as magic.’”’ We might add 
that we have known Christians to use ‘‘in Christ’s 
name’ or a similar phrase as somehow coercive on 
God and hence a form of magic. And it is quite a 
widespread notion among people who are not pro- 
fessedly religious, as well as those that are, that 
conformity to the ten commandments, or obeying 
the Bible in some other particular, will promote 
prosperity by coercing fate or providence. All of 
which goes to show that religion as it shows itself 
today is not clearly differentiated from an unde- 
veloped science, an undeveloped morality, and other 
undeveloped forms of culture. 

The next step in the development of religion, 
which Moore calls the emergence of Gods in the 
proper and fully developed sense, occurs when civ- 
ilization arises with the pastoral and agriculture life, 
with increasing density of population and complex 
social organization and with permanent responsible 
rulers exercising many and great powers over the 
lives of common men. With the domestication of 
animals and drawing of livelihood from them, men 
become aware of dependence upon certain outstand- 
ing features of nature such as seasonable rainfall 
associated with sun, sky and stars. Thus the in- 
numerable, capricious and unorganized spirits that 
thronged in the earlier stage, become more or less 
concentrated or subordinated to the spirits embod- 
ied in these outstanding features of nature. Agri- — 


376 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 


culture still more concentrates attention and the 
sense of dependence upon rather well-defined forces 
of nature. The shepherd can drive his flocks else- 
where, but the agriculturalist must continue depen- 
dent upon the same river, the same winds, and the 
same climatic conditions. In regions where agri- 
culture first arose nature was bountiful and while 
disappointments came often enough to keep alive 
his sense of dependence, he came to think of the 
powers as friendly to him and his community. 
Thus he put his trust more in the worship that per- 
suades, or wins and holds the favor of, a friendly 
god and less in the magic that constrains unfriendly 
or indifferent powers to serve him. 

The next great step in the growth of culture (we 
can scarcely call it, as Moore does, the growth of 
religion, except as it is merged with the cultural 
process) is the idea of God not merely as protector 
and benefactor but as ruler and lawgiver. As prop- 
erty owner and member of a complex social order 
man’s welfare became more and more dependent 
upon law and order and his “‘religious beliefs’’ were 
shaped accordingly. The rise of great earthly 
rulers gave shape and body to the idea of God as 
supreme lawgiver and law enforcer. “Thus religion 
became more and more a matter of morals and of 
law; God became humanized, civilized and moral. 
The development of a cult of regular and orderly 
worship with a priestcraft, an established ceremony 
and temples or other sacred places, further aug- 
mented this process of making God the ordainer and 
sustainer of the laws and practices of organized 


AND SCIENTIFIC METHOD Ot 


society and religion the great sanction of morality. 

The development of appropriate myths carried 
the process still farther. ‘‘These stories about the 
gods help men to imagine them as magnified and 
glorified men and women with individualities of 
their own that are not simply the reflections of 
their spheres of activity. Even the less edifying tales 
only make the likeness stronger and create human 
fellow feeling. In the progress of civilization such 
myths become repugnant to their more refined taste 
or a more elevated morality; and objection is made 
to the scandalous chronicles of the poets. : 
But here again the very idea that the gods should 
set a good example to men is the last consequence 
of their complete humanity.’’® 


But when we speak of religion as developing 
from one stage to another, we do not mean that 
the later drives out the beliefs and practices of the 
earlier. The earlier persists either alongside the 
later or in some sort of amalgamation with it. 
Worship of praise and petition does not drive out 
magic. “The morality of God does not drive out 
belief that the gods still practice that which would 
be immoral in any living being. The supremacy of 
one god does not drive other gods beyond the pale 
of human concern. 


But when some god or gods became identified 
with the moral requirements of the group, trans- 
gression of these requirements became sin, t.e. per- 
sonal offence to God. This is a matter of great 
importance to the advance and support of civiliza- 


6 loc. cit. p. 56, 


378 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 


tion. The small, isolated, homogeneous group 
had but one harmonized system of mores which 
moulded the conduct and belief of the individual 
with almost irresistible force. But: 


With the growth of cities and nations of amal- 
gamated populations and complex interests, the 
compulsive force of community opinion relaxed. 
Advance in knowledge of the world and the work- 
ings of nature undermined many primitive beliefs, 
By taking morals into its sphere and making them 
part of a divine law religion furnished the only 
possible substitute for the sanction of the prim- 
itive mores; a substitute effective as long as the 
authority of religion itself was not challenged. 
But on the other hand religion with its charac- 
teristic conservatism, gave a degree of fixity to 
morals as well as to the rituals of the past, the 
unsorted accumulation of ages. What we regard 
as moral was inextricably entangled with non- 
moral interdiction. . . . Religion was not made 
moral, but morality religious; and religion thus 
often interposed a formidable obstacle to moral 
progress. This is peculiarly the case where law 
is fixed in ‘sacred scriptures containing a closed 
canon of revelation, which admits no addition or © 
subtraction, no change, and thus gives the stamp 
of finality to the institutions and laws and moral 
standards of a past which religion is forbidden to 
outgrow." 


Moore goes on to sketch in a masterly fashion the 
development of these beliefs and practices through 
further stages of civilization, until he reaches the 


tloc, cit. p. 76. 


AND SCIENTIFIC METHOD ihe 


great soteric religions, Zoroastrianism, Judaism, and 
Mohammedanism, which are concerned with the 
conquest of evil in nature and society, both in this 
life and in a world to come. “Then he considers 
those other soteric religions, the mysteries of the 
Hellenistic-Roman world, and certain religions and 
philosophies of India and Greece which are con- 
cerned to deliver the isolated individual from the 
evils of embodied existence in a world of matter 
and sense. 

Finally he takes up Christianity, showing it to be 
a unique synthesis of all the higher religious, moral, 
-and philosophical aspirations and endeavors of the 
Mediterranean area for long centuries—‘‘the relig- 
ious legacy of the ancient world to the ages that 
were to come.” ‘The original and germinating 
nucleus about which this synthesis of Christianity 
was organized was devotion to the personality of 
Jesus as expressed in his teachings and doings. This 
synthesis is a cord of three strands: Jewish ethical 
monotheism; Hellenistic soteriology, profoundly 
modified by the Jewish element; and Greek phil- 
osophy, which not only constituted the formal 
principle of Christian theology, but made large con- 
tributions to the material element. ‘““The intellec- 
tual victory of Christianity over all the rival sal- 
vations of the time was due to the fact that it alone 
offered not merely a way of salvation but a philos- 
ophy of salvation.’’® 

We believe this survey of the birth and growth 
of religion shows most plainly the confusion be- 


8 loc. cit. p. 178. 


380 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 


tween religion and general culture when the latter 
is in its early stages of development. It is truly a 
history of religion if we take religion in that broad 
general sense which makes it comprehensive of all 
germinating culture. But it does not portray re- 
ligion as a unique and characteristic function in 
human life. For instance, when Mr. Moore singles 
out Thales as the man who broke with the past, 
cast off mythology and adopted the scientific method 
of procedure, he is perfectly right. But in so do- 
ing he is defining science in such a way as to exclude 
its origins. All those beliefs and practices which 
he so finely traces before the time of Thales, and 
calls religion, are what finally eventuate in the sci- 
ence of the Greek. On what grounds does he say 
that science suddenly emerges at this point instead 
of gradually developing through all that efflor- 
escence of the human mind which went before? He 
does so on good grounds. He does so because sci- 
ence is so defined as to exclude all those earlier pro- 
cesses. But why not define religion in such a way 
as to exclude all these crude and vague beginnings 
also? Because religion has not, as science has done, 
emerged from this chaotic, germinating mass of 
spiritual endeavor to such a degree that her dis- 
tinctive lineaments can be recognized by all. But 
that does not mean that she has no such lineaments. 
No doubt she stood forth many times, clearly and 
distinctly, even in those days of early savagery, just 
as scientific method may have appeared sporadically 
many times before the days of Thales. But only 
with him did it become an established institution 


AND SCIENTIFIC METHOD 381 


that could be regularly perpetuated throughout suc- 
cessive generations. Religion, pure and distinct, has 
appeared many times, no doubt, in individual lives. 
But it has not been clearly and universally recog- 
nized for what it is, deliberately cultivated in this 
pure and definite form, and so perpetuated through- 
out successive generations by means of established 
institutions. “That which has been recognized as 
religion, deliberately fostered and perpetuated as 
such, has been a confused mass of outworn husks 
and germinating buds of spiritual life. Religion 
pure and simple, with its own function in life 
clearly distinguished from all others, has not yet 
stood forth in our midst. But we believe its ap- 
pearance is near at hand. We believe its steps are 
even now at the door and its hand on the latch. 

Religion is man’s endeavor to find that adjust- 
ment to God which will yield most abundant life. 
For God is precisely that object, whatsoever its na- 
ture may be, which will yield maximum security 
and abundance to all human living, when right ad- 
justment is made. With this definition of the term 
it cannot be doubted that God exists. The exact 
nature of God is still problematical and may be for 
many years to come. ‘The most important prob- 
lem that can engage the mind of the human race is 
that of discovering what God fully and certainly 
is. Here again our definition of the term makes this 
statement self-evident. We believe much valuable 
work has been done toward the solution of this su- 
preme problem of all human living. But still more 
valuable work awaits the doing. 


382 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 


Some may think this most important object of 
human concern is society. Buta little thought will 
show that it cannot be merely society in general 
which is of supreme importance. It can only be 
some particular instance of society, one’s own social 
group, for example, and that “kingdom of God” 
into which it may be developed. The object of 
supreme concern, from the standpoint of society, 
must be those present and actual conditions, adjust- 
ment to which will bring to pass the most desirable 
society and sustain it in so far as it may be attained 
at any given time. ‘These present and actual con- 
ditions which are most critically and ultimately im- 
portant, taken collectively, constitute God. That 
is what our definition of the term implies. 

Some may think this most important object in 
the universe is a certain ensemble of chemical ele- 
ments. Still others may think it (or He) is elec- 
tricity or some other such pervasive form of energy. 
The moon-mad lover may react to his lady as hold- 
ing this place of highest value; and the drug addict 
may treat his opium as having the status of God. 
The prophet may think God is a superhuman mind 
that is somehow operative in the universe. Some 
may think God is the universe taken in its organic 
totality. We do not think any of these statements 
concerning God are satisfactory. But perhaps all 
of them afford some glimpse of the truth and God 
can be known for what he is only when these 
glimpses have been worked out into a comprehen- 
sive vision. But God, we know, is the most im- 
portant object that can engage the attention of man. 


AND SCIENTIFIC METHOD 383 


The only hope of bringing human life to its largest 
fulfillment depends upon finding God and the right 
adjustment to him. The very meaning of the 
term God, as we use it, shows this to be the case, 
The fact that human life continues and grows shows 
that in some measure we have found him. But we 
must find him more completely. And, what is much 
more important, we must find how to make that 
adjustment to him which will bring human life to 
its maximum security and abundance, 

The greatest creative enthusiasm of which hu- 
man life is capable can be awakened only when a 
man gives his whole attention to the object which 
is, in fact, the condition of greatest enrichment to 
all human living. Only as a man exposes himself 
to the full stimulus of this object can his utmost 
capacity for response be awakened. ‘This attitude 
toward the most important object in the universe 
is worship. And worship is the heart of religion. 
From it arises the largest creative endeavor humanly 
attainable. 

No matter what a man treats as the most impor- 
tant thing in the universe, he is worshipping if he 
puts himself in that attitude toward it in which he 
can experience the maximum stimulus it can yield. 
He may be worshipping an idol, but it is worship. 
If it be the true God, however, or that which ap- 
proximates the true God, his worship will arouse 
and organize his impulses for the farthest swing of 
constructive achievement of which he is capable. 
Such, we believe, is the rightful work of religion in 
human living. Its function is creative. 


_ INDEX 


A 
Aesthetic experience, 198 ff, 
Art, 199 ff. 
Alexander, S., 151. 
Alteration, 234. 
Ames, E. S., 269, 
Aristotle, 337, 
Association, 133. 
Atonement, 103, 104. 
Autosuggestion, 215 ff. 
Awareness, 189 ff. 


B 


Bacon, Francis, 59. 
Behaviorism, 174. 

Beliefs as instruments, 310, 
Bergson, Henri, 43. 

Brill, 294. 

DroadnGa)..65 355 
Brotherhood, 250 ff. 
Buddha, 345. 


Cc 


Cabot, Philip, 215. 
Christianity and tradition, 60 ff. 
—and mysticism, 242. 
Church, function of, 246. 
Coe, Geo. A., 36. 
Contemplation, used in special 
sense, 66 ff. 
—and love, 86 ff. 
—and mysticism, 76 ff. 
—and scientific method, 73, 
74. 
Cooley, W. F., 166 n. 
Copernican theory, 164, 
Copernicus, 190. 
Creativity, 257 ff. 


D 
Darwin, Chas., 186, 190, 


Datum of religious experience, 
ow de | 
De La Mare, 201. 
Descartes, 160. 
Dewey, John, 6, 
344, 
Dissociation, 228 ff. 
Dreams, 364. 
Dynamic of worship, 239 ff, 


E 


Eddington, A. D. S., 166, 
Eucken, Rudolf, 360. 
Event and object, 164, 165. 
Evil transmuted by love, 105. 
—problem of, 106. 
Evocative use of words, 48 ff. 
Experience, aesthetic, 197. 
—, immediate, 22, 191, 204, 
262, 
—, interpretation of, 29, 44. 
—, religious, 37 ff. 
—, religious, compared to 
aesthetic experience, 197, 
—, religious, compared to 
erotic experience, 200. 
—, religious emotion in, 206 


Lar sea: 


ff. 
—, religious and = scientific 
method, 40. 


F 


Freud, Edmund, 294. 
Freudian psychology, 36, 294. 
G 
Galileo, 162, 170, 180, 
God, certainty of, 10, 75. 
—, how we know, 21 ff. 
—in sensuous experience, 30. 
—means to most abundant 


life, 9, 


190. 


385 


386 


God, object of experience, 5. 
Green, Paul, 7. 


H 
Habit, 123 ff. 
Haldane, J. B. S., 150, 173. 
Harvey, 190. 


Henderson, L. J., n., 150. 

Hobhouse, L. T., 150. 

Hocking, Wm. E., 6, 34, 323, 
353% 

Hudson, W. H., 81. 

Human behavior, 305 ff. 


I 


Idealism, 272 ff. 

Ideals, 267 ff. 

Immediate experience, 22, 191, 
204, 262. 

Impulse, 119. 

Inge, Dean, 60, 181. 


J 


Jacks lobe ZO eo oO. 

James, Wm., 15, 25, 34, 79, 
CRW Waal Lege RY, ES ep AL eae To 
e505. 

Jeffries, Richard, 77. 

Jesus’ way of love, 113 ff. 

Jones, Rufus M., 35, 212. 

Jung, 294, 


K 


Kane. 27,a192. 

Kepler, 190. 

Kerr, Hugh, 6. 

Knowledge, theory of, 21 ff, 25. 


iy 
Leuba, James H., 323, 327 ff. 
Lewis, Sinclair, 238. 7 


Vitor 01,55; 
Love and atonement, 103, 104. 


INDEX 


Love and discernment, 99. 
—and moral standard, 101. 
—and time, 97. 

—and contemplation, 86 ff. 
—, Christian, 95. 

—, Jesus’ way of, 109 ff. 
—, sentimental, 89 ff. 
—,transmuting evil, 105. 


M 


Mach, E., 170. 
MacIntosh, John, 6. 
Martin, Everett Dean, 294. 
Materialism, 170 ff. 
Mathews, Shailer, 6. 
Meaning, 324 ff. 
Meaningless experience, 322 ff. 
Mechanism, 121 ff. 
Metaphysics, 144 ff. 
Mind, 157 ff. 
Mohammed, 345. 
Moore, Geo. Foote, 361 ff. 
Moral creativity, 255. 
—dynamic, 239. 
Moral standard for love, 101. 
Morgan, Lloyd, 150. 
Mumford, Lewis, 238. 
Mysticism and Christianity, 
243, 244. 
—and contemplation, 76 ff. 
—and discovery, 191 ff. 
—and rebirth, 217. 
—and reflective 
343. 
—and tradition, 59 ff, 
—Christianized, 60. 
—, different meanings of, 12 
i: 
—,examples of, 77 ff. 
—, our usage defined, 15. 


N 
Newton, 190. 


thinking, 


INDEX 


O 


Object and event, 164, 165. 
Objectives, 279 ff. 
Ogden and Richards, 48 n. 


5 

Pasteur, 190. 
Pattison, Pringle, 273. 
Perception, 189 ff. 
Perry, Ralph Barton, 6, 160, 

LGN, 63. 
Personality, 157, 
Pierce, Edgar, n. 180. 
Plato, 337. 
Play and work, 125 ff. 
Prayer, 247 ff. 
Primitive religion, 353 ff. 
Psychology, 290 ff. 
Ptolemaic theory, 164. 
Purpose, 157. 


R 

Radical empiricism, 312. 

Rebirth, 217. 

Reflective thinking, 322 ff. 

Religious experience, see Expe- 
rience. 

Religion and ideals, 267 ff. 
—and science, 131 ff. 
—and subjectivism, 206 ff. 
—, function of, 368 ff. 

—, growth of, 362. 
—, primitive, 353 ff. 

Resurrection, 108. 

Revaluation of values, 267 ff. 

mionanowe. lol 4) Lobel 95, 

Ritchie, A. D., 145, 160. 

Ritual, 54 ff. 

Russell, Bertrand, 26, 29. 


S 


Santayana, Geo., 367, 370, 


30 n. 
Science and religion, 131 ff. 


387 


Scientific method, II, 160 ff. 
—and contemplation, 73, 74. 
—and religious experience, 

Zot. 
—ignores much experience, 
161, 183 ff. 
—in morals, 237 ff, 259. 
—limitations of, 146 ff. 
—not self-sufficient, 198 ff. 

Sentimentality, 48 ff. 

Simkhovitch, V., 109. 

Sin, cleansing from, 104. 

Social solidarity, 251 ff. 

Society, 132 ff. 

Solipsism, 179. 

Spirit, 157, 364. 

St. Francis of Assissi, 345, 

Subliminal, 313 ff. 

Subjectivism in religion, 206 ff. 

Suppression, 228 ff, 

Symbolism, 299 ff, 


4 

Taylor system, 141. 

Teleology, 155 ff. 

Thales, 19, 380. 

Theory of knowledge, 21 
passim. 

Time and love, 93 ff. 

Tradition, 59 ff. 

WwW 

Wells, H. G., 39. 

Whitehead, A. N., 29, 153, 
164, 176, 178, 180, 207: 

Whitman, Walt, 79. 

Words, evocative use of, 48 ff. 
—and mysticism, 12, 

Wiggam, A. E., 51. 

Work and play, 125 ff. 

World as scientifically defined, 
146 ff. 

Worship, 54, 55, 
252, 349 ff. 


56, 246, 


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